Research Paradigms and Their Methodological Alignment in Social Sciences is a comprehensive guide addressing the common conceptions surrounding research paradigms. This practical book demystifies complex concepts, giving researchers a nuanced understanding of the significance of research paradigms. It offers detailed insights, examples, and strategies for selecting and applying appropriate research methods, aiming to enhance the rigour and impact of scholarly work. This insightful guide meticulously explores the intricacies of research paradigms in the social sciences. It begins by unravelling the concept and historical development of research paradigm, emphasising its pivotal role in shaping the research process. The book elucidates major research paradigms, including positivism, interpretivism, transformative paradigm, postcolonial indigenous paradigm, and pragmatism. Each paradigm is dissected, unveiling philosophical underpinnings, methodological designs, and critical considerations. The chapters carefully align research questions with specific paradigms through illustrative case studies, offering practical guidance for researchers at all levels. Notably, the transformative paradigm and postcolonial indigenous perspective receive dedicated attention, addressing their unique methodological nuances and ethical dimensions. The exploration extends to pragmatism, seamlessly integrating theoretical foundations with real-world applications. The book strives to bridge the awareness gap in academic settings, fostering a profound appreciation for research paradigms and promoting a thoughtful, rigorous approach to scholarly inquiry. This book caters to students, novice and experienced researchers, offering a comprehensive understanding of research paradigms. It's valuable for academia, aiding undergraduate and postgraduate students, educators, and researchers in various disciplines. Research organisations, academic institutions, and professionals in diverse fields engaged in research and development will also find it a valuable resource.

This unique book explains the central role that research paradigms play in the design and conduct of social research. The authors argue that social research should not just describe or confirm a social problem but should seek to find an explanation for it and to do so requires research with eyes philosophically wide open. Important philosophical and practice elements of three widely recognized paradigms Neo-Positive, Interpretive and Critical Realist are carefully elaborated and their use in action illustrated with detailed examples. The authors show that the philosophical assumptions of a chosen paradigm must match those embedded in a characterization of a research problem and its context. This paradigm orientation is shown to be fundamental to appropriately framing a problem, formulating research questions, deciding on a logic of inquiry and selecting and using methods to investigate it. Ultimately, an appropriate paradigm orientation to social research provides a dispassionate, rigorous and effective basis for the production of new social scientific knowledge. Following on from Blaikies Approaches to Social Enquiry and Designing Social Research, this innovative book will be invaluable to upper-level and research students, their lecturers and supervisors, and researchers across the social sciences.

Making Sense of Social Research Methodology: A Student and Practitioner Centered Approach introduces students to research methods by illuminating the underlying assumptions of social science inquiry. Authors Pengfei Zhao, Karen Ross, Peiwei Li, and Barbara Dennis show how research concepts are often an integral part of everyday life through illustrative common scenarios, like looking for a recipe or going on a job interview. The authors extrapolate from these personal but ubiquitous experiences to further explain concepts, like gathering data or social context, so students develop a deeper understanding of research and its applications outside of the classroom. Students from across the social sciences can take this new understanding into their own research, their professional lives, and their personal lives with a new sense of relevancy and urgency. This text is organized into clusters that center on major topics in social science research. The first cluster introduces concepts that are fundamental to all aspects and steps of the research process. These concepts include relationality, identity, ethics, epistemology, validity, and the sociopolitical context within which research occurs. The second and third clusters focus on data and inference. These clusters engage concretely with steps of the research process, including decisions about designing research, generating data, making inferences. Throughout the chapters, Pause and Reflect open-ended questions provide readers with the space for further inquiry into research concepts and how they apply to life. Research Scenario features in each chapter offer new perspectives on major research topics from leading and emerging voices in methods. Moving from this dialogic perspective to more actionable advice, You and Research features offer students concrete steps for engaging with research. Take your research into the world with Making Sense of Social Research Methodology: A Student and Practitioner Centered Approach.

In 1991 the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) published "Postgraduate Taining Guidelines". Throughout the document emphasis is placed on the need for universities to make postgraduate research students aware of the methodological issues that affect their work.; This text explores the relationship between knowledge, methodology and research practice across the broad spectrum of the social sciences in langage that is accessible to researchers at all levels of their research careers. It follows the themes that there is no single practice or correct methodology, and that the diversity and variety in terms of methodology and disciplinary focus are a sign of the sophistication and complexity of the proceses of social research. The text examines socio-cultural contexts of social research and relates them to contemporary shifts in focus such as feminism, critical theory and postmodernism. The importance of selecting the research methodology most appropriate to the subject discipline concerned is emphasized.

This book consists of three major sections. In the first, which includes chapters 1 to 7, the basic concepts of the methodology of the social social sciences are discussed. In the second, chapters 8 and 9, the most important concepts of part one are integrated in discussions on the writing of research proposals and research reports. The third section (appendices) consists of three "case studies" in which the most important methodological principles which were discussed in the preceding sections are illustrated.

Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive yet compact A-Z for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking research across the social sciences, featuring 71 entries that cover a wide range of concepts, methods, and theories. Each entry begins with an accessible introduction to a method, using real-world examples from a wide range of academic disciplines, before discussing the benefits and limitations of the approach, its current status in academic practice, and finally providing tips and advice for readers on when and how to apply the method in their own research. Wide ranging and interdisciplinary, the text covers both well-established concepts and emerging ideas, such as big data and network analysis, for qualitative and quantitative research methods. All entries feature extensive cross-referencing, providing ease of navigation and, pointing readers to related concepts, and to help build their overall understanding of research methods.

An encyclopedia about various methods of qualitative research.