Methods of research: educational, psychological, sociological / by Carter V. Good and Douglas E. Scates.

This book has been written for field workers, graduate students, and members of the senior division of the undergraduate college who would evaluate the quality of conclusions, either as producers or consumers of research. Knowledge of research techniques and active participation in problem-solving are more likely to stimulate in the student the excitement of learning and of searching for truth than will textbook and lecture materials in the form of ready-made generalizations. Therefore, in this book research is presented as a way of finding answers to questions that make human beings curious or perplexed. The organization of this text follows substantially the steps or sequence of problem-solving: formulation and development of the problem for investigation, and survey of the related literature; selection and use of one or more appropriate methods for gathering evidence, together with analysis and interpretation of the data; and reporting and implementation of the findings. Aspects of analysis and interpretation are treated in the setting of their functional relationships to the methodology of research (historical, descriptive-survey, experimental, case-clinical, and genetic) rather than in the more artificial setting of a separate chapter or section of this book"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).