Research Design
Creating Robust Approaches for the Social Sciences
- Stephen Gorard - Durham University, UK
This new book: discusses the nature of design; gives an introduction to design notation; offers a flexible approach to new designs; looks at a range of standard design models; and presents craft tips for real-life problems and compromises. Most importantly, it provides the rationale for preferring one design over another within any given context. Each section is illustrated with case studies of real work and concludes with suggested readings and topics for discussion in seminars and workshops, making it an ideal textbook for postgraduate research methods courses.
Based on the author's teaching on the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre "Masters in Research Methods" at the University of Birmingham, and his ongoing work for the ESRC Researcher Development Initiative, this is an essential text for postgraduate researchers and academics. There is no book like Research Design on the market that addresses all of these issues in an easy to comprehend style, for those who want to design research and make critical judgements about the designs of others.
Our trainees need more on methodology than design at the standard at which they are writing (undergrad), but this excellent book is still worth a read for them,, and for anyone at a higher stage such as Masters or Doctoral-level research, I would say this is an essential book.
This is a clearly written and helpful book for anyone grappling with the anxieties associated with a first research project design. Gorard takes the reader on a pragmatic step-by-step approach to research, and debunks the myth that robust research can only be done in the natural sciences, giving hope to those of us who continue to grapple with the complexities of the social sciences.
For our master degree students it is essential to have this book which is going to be very usefull in their whole professional development. I suggest it as a mandatory book for my teaching courses.
Whilst the content of this book is challenging, informative and thought provoking, the style is engaging and very readable. From the start, the author presents a compelling rational for why this is an essential read for anyone undertaking social science research and chapter by chapter it becomes very obvious why! A 'must read' for novice researchers.
Sage College Publishing
