Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research, 7th Edition

The most cutting-edge research methods, applied to engaging social issues, in a student-friendly textbook written by an award-winning researcher and teacher.

In this new Seventh Edition of his perennially successful social research text, author Russell K. Schutt continues to make research come alive through stories that illustrate the methods presented in each chapter, and hands-on exercises that help students learn by doing.

Investigating the Social World helps readers understand research methods as an integrated whole, appreciate the value of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and understand the need to make ethical research decisions.

Key Features:

• the "doing" of social research is closely and consistently linked to important social issues using real social data

• provides guides for critiquing research articles, exercises for applying research skills, and examples of analysing and reporting social data

• ethical concerns and ethical decision making are discussed with each study of specific methods

• discussion questions, practice, web, SPSS exercises, and research proposal development exercises included at the end of each chapter

• a companion study site will provide journal articles, self-quizzes, electronic flashcards, as well as wide-ranging data sets and interactive exercises

New to this Edition:

• upgraded coverage of research methods to include the spread of cell phones and the use of the Internet, including expanded coverage of Web surveys

• larger page size in full color allows for better display of pedagogical features

• new 'Research in the News' boxes included within chapters

• more international examples

• expanded statistics coverage now includes more coverage of inferenctial statistics and regression analysis

Russell K. Schutt, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he received the 2007 Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Service. Since 1990, he has also been Lecturer on Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry (Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center) at the Harvard Medical School. He completed his BA, MA, and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University. In addition to seven editions of the text on which this brief edition is based, Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research, and four other coauthored versions—for the fields of social work, criminal justice, psychology, and education—he is the author of the new book, Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness, and of Organization in a Changing Environment, coeditor of the Organizational Response to Social Problems, and coauthor of Responding to the Homeless: Policy and Practice. He has authored and coauthored numerous journal articles, book chapters, and research reports on homelessness, mental health, organizations, law, and teaching research methods. He currently directs an evaluation of a Massachusetts Department of Public Health coordinated care program. His primary research focuses on social factors that shape the impact of housing, employment, and services for severely mentally ill persons and on the service preferences of homeless persons and service personnel. He has also studied influences on well-being, satisfaction, and cognitive functioning; processes of organizational change and the delivery of case management; decision making in juvenile justice and in union admissions; political participation; media representations of mental illness; and HIV/AIDS prevention.