Social research methods

In this Byte, the contributions consider the way that digitally meditated social processes are transforming institutions. It examines the interconnectedness of institutions and considers digitization across schooling, work, and media, with an eye on inequality.

Chapters in this Byte cover topics such as designing a research framework and how to work ethically as a digital researcher, continually interrogating one’s position as a researcher and reflecting on the process of knowledge creation. Cumulatively, they highlight the value of sociological theory for understanding our digital world.

The pieces in this Byte raise important questions about what it means to bring our embodied selves into contact with digital media technologies. The selections expand our understanding of what it means to live in and through bodies augmented by digital technologies within a deeply unequal social world.

This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing it. The first book to build on Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and students.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The book is a guide to how the measurement of violence can be best achieved. It shows how to make femicide, rape, domestic violence, and FGM visible in official statistics and offers practical guidance on definitions, indicators and coordination mechanisms.

Demystifying evaluation is an accessible introductory guide explaining the options open to evaluators and how to make appropriate choices of research methods and covering issues such as managing expectations of evaluation, quantitative and qualitative methods, engaging stakeholders and providing action-orientated approaches to help end-users.

Offering a fresh look to complement the dominant singular voice of developmental psychology, this unique collection of 12 research projects carried out in the UK and USA is essential reading for anyone studying or working with children at play.

Universities are increasingly taking an active role as research collaborators with citizens, public bodies, and community organisations but they, their funders and institutions struggle to articulate the value of this work. This book addresses the key challenges in collaborative research in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

This practitioner-oriented text is the first to help social researchers define research projects, manage the social research process, engage with stakeholders and influence change. It will be invaluable for all those commissioning, managing and conducting social research.

Mapping environmental sustainability explains the development of visual mapping techniques with practical case studies that describe their application in environmental sustainability projects, from working with farmers and their networks to using visual mapping with indigenous communities and managing coastal environments.

This collection explores the roles of emotion, violence, uncertainty, identity and positionality in doing research in and on conflict zones, as well as the complexity of methodological choices. It presents a nuanced view of conflict research that addresses the uncomfortable spaces of conflict research and the need for reflection on these issues.

An examination of the early work of the innovative Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Ethics and Law Committee. It will help anyone involved in other cohort studies to understand how ethical policies evolve.