Research Methods for Construction will help you instil rigour into your problem-solving, and into your reports and publications. It will be of value to construction, surveying, architecture and civil engineering students undertaking research, whether for bachelors and masters degree dissertations, or for masters and doctoral research degree theses. Now in its Fourth Edition, this remains one of the few books to provide guidance on research formulation, methodologies, and methods specifically for construction students. Three main sections – Producing a Proposal, Executing the Research and Reporting the Results discuss the key issues in research and examine the primary approaches, both qualitative and quantitative. The methods adopted for scientific and engineering experiments, model building and simulations are discussed, as well as those employed for research into management, social and economic issues. The authors examine the requirements for data and analysis, including the important statistical considerations and a range of qualitative techniques that enable construction researchers to appreciate what needs to be evaluated in devising how research may be carried out effectively and efficiently. This new edition has been updated to reflect current debates and concerns, including ethical issues, legislation and codes of practice concerning the collection, processing, storage, use and disposal of data. Pressures of time and funding to carry out the empirical work all too often lead to a lack of attention to how the study should be done and why. The authors address the importance of explaining the philosophical approach adopted (ontology, epistemology) and the consequent methodology. They advocate close scrutiny of the methods available for appropriateness, both academically and practically. The fundamental theme of the book remains to facilitate a researcher’s informed and justified selection of a philosophical paradigm and of appropriate methods to execute the research.

Design Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management is the most comprehensive guide on how to do research of and in project management. Project management as a discipline has experienced near-exponential growth in its application across the business and not-for-profit sectors. This second edition of the authoritative reference book offers a substantial update on the first edition with over 60% new content and so provides both practitioner and student researchers with a fully up-to-date and complete guide to research practice on project management. In Design Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management, Beverly Pasian and Rodney Turner have brought together 27 original chapters from many of the leading international thinkers in project management research. The collection looks at each step in the research stages, including research strategy, management, methodology (quantitative and qualitative), techniques as well as how to share and publish research findings. The chapters offer an international perspective with examples from a wide range of project management applications; engineering, construction, mega-projects, high-risk environments and social transformation. Each chapter includes tips and exercises for the research student, as well as a complete set of further references. The book is the go-to text for practitioners undertaking research in companies, and also doctoral and masters students and their supervisors who are involved in research projects in and for universities.

This book unpacks the links between oil energy, state power, urban space and culture, by looking at the Petro-Socialist Venezuelan oil state. It challenges the disciplinary compartmentalisation of the analysis of the material and cultural effects of oil to demonstrate that within the Petrostate, Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture become indivisible. To this end, it examines how oil is a cultural resource, in addition to a natural resource, implying therefore that struggles over culture implicate oil, and struggles over oil implicate culture. This book develops a story about Venezuela as an oil state and the way it deploys its policies to instrumentalise culture and urban space by examining the way Petro-Socialism manifests in space, how it is imagined in speeches and how it is discursively constructed in adverts. The discussion reveals how a particular culture is privileged by the Venezuela state-owned oil company and its social and cultural branch. The book explores to what effect the state-owned oil company constructs a parallel notion of culture that becomes inextricable from land, akin to a mineral deposit, and tightly controlled by the Petrostate. The book will appeal to researchers who are interested in Resource Management, Environmental Studies, Cultural Studies and Political Geography.

This textbook provides first-hand, inside accounts of the process of doing research in organizations. It is intended both for students of research methods in sociology and social psychology, and for students of organization studies, organizational behaviour and management. The contributors tackle such problems as: gaining access to organizations, ‘getting on’ in organizations, quantitative and qualitative styles of investigation, the use of historical materials, the effects of resources on the context of research, the part played by political factors in organizational research, the relevance of grounded theory and conducting research within a cross-cultural framework.

This impressive book challenges the orthodoxies that have dominated the construction management research (CMR) field for the past 50 years. Providing a comprehensive framework for understanding the complex and multi-faceted domain of construction, A Research Agenda for Construction Management sets out a range of alternative perspectives which problematise the axioms upon which much CMR knowledge is based and offers new directions for the research community to consider.

This highly practical guide provides information that will help research students avoid needless mistakes. It informs and advises you about many of the important facets of postgraduate research, including: what it means to conduct research at doctoral level the requirements for independence, contribution to knowledge, originality and suitability for publication planning a research project over a period of time responsible research practice criteria used in the examination of a PhD. Getting a PhD is an essential handbook for PhD students and provides plenty of useful advice for Masters students or undergraduates conducting a research project.