Social Research Methods

This book provides a practical and concise introductory guide to doing research with children and young people, outlining the benefits and challenges along with key ethical, methodological and other considerations. Throughout, there are practical examples, checklists and top tips to aid the reader.

This book addresses the frustrating gap between research conducted on effective practices and the lack of routine use of such practices. The author introduces a model for reducing this gap, highlighting the roles of social networks, research evidence, practitioner/policymaker decision-making, research-practice-policy partnerships.

Based on ethnographic research conducted over a year, this book tells the story of twelve people, each living with illness. Focusing on everyday life, it explores ideas of care, vulnerability and choice. Juxtaposing text with illustrations, the book highlights the intimacies of visual sociology and demonstrates the value of sensuous scholarship.

This book shows how community groups can work in partnership with universities to imagine better futures and make them happen, co-producing knowledge to achieve positive change.

With a diverse range of case studies, and chapters co-written between academics and community partners, this book shows that co-produced research can be an empowering force by which communities stake a claim in the places they live.

Building substantially on the earlier, landmark text, What Works? (Policy Press, 2000), this book brings together key thinkers and researchers to provide a clearly-structured review of the aspirations and contemporary realities of evidence-informed policy and practice.

This concise, informative book analyses impact across the social sciences. Drawing on fifteen interviews with senior academics for a longitudinal view, the author sets out valuable recommendations of how and when scholars can achieve impact.

This book analyses societal trends and controversies related to developments in data ownership, access, construction, dissemination and interpretation, looking at the ways that society interacts with and uses statistical data.

Drawing upon unique empirical data based on interviews with high-profile ex-offenders and experts in the field, this book sheds new light on drug markets, organised crime and gangs in the UK. McLean sparks new debate on the subject, offering solutions and alternatives for how to best tackle gang violence.

Drawing from forty years of experience, Julia Brannen offers an invaluable account of how research in family studies is conducted and ‘matters’ at particular times. An exceptional resource for family scholars and those interested in the methodology of social research.

This book innovatively explores how we can better apply a ‘bottom-up’ approach to the design of regulatory systems that recognise the capabilities, knowledge, passions and creativity of citizens in communities at the margins.

This unique study of social work provides a bold and challenging view of the subject from an anthropological perspective. Combining research and personal reflection, it explores cultural and symbolic representations of social work, evolving identities of social work practitioners and the ways in which they and society now view one another.