Download or read book Redesigning Social Inquiry written by Charles C. Ragin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over twenty years Charles C. Ragin has been at the forefront of the development of innovative methods for social scientists. In Redesigning Social Inquiry, he continues his campaign to revitalize the field, challenging major aspects of the conventional template for social science research while offering a clear alternative. Redesigning Social Inquiry provides a substantive critique of the standard approach to social research—namely, assessing the relative importance of causal variables drawn from competing theories. Instead, Ragin proposes the use of set-theoretic methods to find a middle path between quantitative and qualitative research. Through a series of contrasts between fuzzy-set analysis and conventional quantitative research, Ragin demonstrates the capacity for set-theoretic methods to strengthen connections between qualitative researchers’ deep knowledge of their cases and quantitative researchers’ elaboration of cross-case patterns. Packed with useful examples, Redesigning Social Inquiry will be indispensable to experienced professionals and to budding scholars about to embark on their first project.
Download or read book Fuzzy Set Social Science written by Charles C. Ragin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative approach to the practice of social scienceÇharles Ragin explores the use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitive and qualitative methods. He argues that fuzzy sets allow a far richer dialogue between ideas and evidence in social research than previously possible.
Download or read book Rethinking Social Inquiry written by Henry E. Brady and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With innovative new chapters on process tracing, regression analysis, and natural experiments, the second edition of Rethinking Social Inquiry further extends the reach of this path-breaking book. The original debate with King, Keohane, and Verba_now updated_remains central to the volume, and the new material illuminates evolving discussions of essential methodological tools. Thus, process tracing is often invoked as fundamental to qualitative analysis, but is rarely applied with precision. Pitfalls of regression analysis are sometimes noted, but often are inadequately examined. And the complex assumptions and trade-offs of natural experiments are poorly understood. The second edition extends the methodological horizon through exploring these critical tools. A distinctive feature of this edition is the online placement of four chapters from the prior edition, all focused on the dialogue with King, Keohane, and Verba. Also posted online are exercises for teaching process tracing and understanding process tracing.
Download or read book Constructing Social Research written by Charles C. Ragin and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constructing Social Research answers the question: What is social science? Updated throughout with new references and examples, the Third Edition of this innovative text by Charles C. Ragin and Lisa M. Amoroso shows the unity within the diversity of activities called social research to help students understand how all social researchers construct representations of social life using theories, systematic data collection, and careful examination of that data.
Download or read book Designing Social Inquiry written by Gary King and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994-05-22 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designing Social Inquiry focuses on improving qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. What are the right questions to ask? How should you define and make inferences about causal effects? How can you avoid bias? How many cases do you need, and how should they be selected? What are the consequences of unavoidable problems in qualitative research, such as measurement error, incomplete information, or omitted variables? What are proper ways to estimate and report the uncertainty of your conclusions?
Download or read book Intersectional Inequality written by Charles C. Ragin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this guidebook, we have a powerful contribution to social science methodology in a context where methodology is contested, and is therefore political: different methodologies can produce quite different results or findings using the same evidence. The evidence in Ragin and Fiss s book is survey data. Ragin s has developed for 25 years a way to bridge the case study method and the large n statistical study. He calls it the set analytic method --making use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrumentthe variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise onedegree of membership in a well-defined set. Now, with Intersectional Inequality, Ragin and his coauthor, Peter Fiss, show how the method works in application to a very mainstream sociological research topic. That topic, the use of IQ and school achievement tests as predictors of life chances, is advanced here by viewing cases intersectionally, i.e., in terms of the different ways they combine causally relevant conditions. The specific controversy they take up is the famous Bell Curve book of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein which argued that IQ is influenced by both inherited and environmental factors. Controversy has gone on for 20 years over which variable has the strongest impact on life changes: education, or test scores, or family background. The centrality, now more than ever, of education to American social and economic policy, compels close re-examination of traditional methods (and the blind spots of the so-called net-effects approach). By use of this sophisticated qualitative comparative analysis, Ragin and Fiss underscore the importance of racial differences in addressing social inequality in America today."
Download or read book Configurational Comparative Methods written by Benoît Rihoux and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new addition to the Applied Social Research Methods series is unrivalled, it is written by leaders in the growing field of rigorous, comparative techniques.
Download or read book QCA with R written by Adrian Duşa and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive guide to qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) using R. Using Boolean algebra to implement principles of comparison used by scholars engaged in the qualitative study of macro social phenomena, QCA acts as a bridge between the quantitative and the qualitative traditions. The QCA package for R, created by the author, facilitates QCA within a graphical user interface. This book provides the most current information on the latest version of the QCA package, which combines written commands with a cross-platform interface. Beginning with a brief introduction to the concept of QCA, this book moves from theory to calibration, from analysis to factorization, and hits on all the key areas of QCA in between. Chapters one through three are introductory, familiarizing the reader with R, the QCA package, and elementary set theory. The next few chapters introduce important applications of the package beginning with calibration, analysis of necessity, analysis of sufficiency, parameters of fit, negation and factorization, and the construction of Venn diagrams. The book concludes with extensions to the classical package, including temporal applications and panel data. Providing a practical introduction to an increasingly important research tool for the social sciences, this book will be indispensable for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in conducting qualitative research in political science, sociology, business and management, and evaluation studies.
Download or read book Qualitative Comparative Analysis with R written by Alrik Thiem and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social science theory often builds on sets and their relations. Correlation-based methods of scientific enquiry, however, use linear algebra and are unsuited to analyzing set relations. The development of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) by Charles Ragin has given social scientists a formal tool for identifying set-theoretic connections based on Boolean algebra. As a result, interest in this method has markedly risen among social scientists in recent years. This book offers the first complete introduction on how to perform QCA in the R software environment for statistical computing and graphics with the QCA package. Developed as a comprehensive solution, QCA provides an unprecedented scope of functionality for analyzing crisp, multi-value and fuzzy sets. The reader is not required to have knowledge of R, but the book assumes an understanding of the fundamentals of QCA. Using examples from published work, the authors demonstrate how to make the most of QCA’s wide-ranging capabilities for the reader’s own purposes. Although mainly written for political scientists, this book is also of interest to scholars from other disciplines in the social sciences such as sociology, business, management, organization, anthropology, education and health.
Download or read book Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference written by Tasha Fairfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairfield and Charman provide a modern, rigorous and intuitive methodology for case-study research to help social scientists and analysts make better inferences from qualitative evidence. The book develops concrete guidelines for conducting inference to best explanation given incomplete information; no previous exposure to Bayesian analysis or specialized mathematical skills are needed. Topics covered include constructing rival hypotheses that are neither too simple nor overly complex, assessing the inferential weight of evidence, counteracting cognitive biases, selecting cases, and iterating between theory development, data collection, and analysis. Extensive worked examples apply Bayesian guidelines, showcasing both exemplars of intuitive Bayesian reasoning and departures from Bayesian principles in published case studies drawn from process-tracing, comparative, and multimethod research. Beyond improving inference and analytic transparency, an overarching goal of this book is to revalue qualitative research and place it on more equal footing with respect to quantitative and experimental traditions by illustrating that Bayesianism provides a universally applicable inferential framework.
Download or read book Educational Communities of Inquiry Theoretical Framework Research and Practice written by Akyol, Zehra and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communications technologies have been continuously integrated into learning and training environments which has revealed the need for a clear understanding of the process. The Community of Inquiry (COI) Theoretical Framework has a philosophical foundation which provides planned guidelines and principles to development useful learning environments and guarantees successful educational experiences. Educational Communities of Inquiry: Theoretical Framework, Research, and Practice is an extensive reference that offers theoretical foundations and developments associated with the COl theoretical framework. This collection is a valuable source of ideas, research opportunities, and challenges for scholars and practitioners in the field of education technology.
Download or read book Redesigning Learning Spaces written by Robert Dillon and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2016-05-04 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring hope, joy, and positive energy back into the daily work of the classroom. In this book, learn to design brain-friendly learning environments that foster engagement, productivity, and achievement while allowing for seamless integration of educational technology. Discover how flexible, welcoming, and comfortable learning spaces can prepare students for the future. In this book you’ll: Find resources for redesigning spaces on a sustainable budget Support technology integration through blended and virtual learning Hear from teachers and schools whose successfully transformed spaces have increased student achievement
Download or read book Redesigning Work written by Lynda Gratton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we make the most of the greatest global shift in the world of work for a century and radically redesign the way we work—forever? Professor Lynda Gratton is the global thought-leader on the future of work. Drawing on thirty years of research into the technological, demographic, cultural, and societal trends that are shaping work and building on what we learned through our experiences of the pandemic, Gratton presents her innovative four-step framework for redesigning work that will help you: Understand your people and what drives performance Reimagine creative new ways to work Model and test these approaches within your organization Act and create to ensure your redesign has lasting benefits Gratton presents real-world case studies that show companies grappling with work challenges. These include the global bank HSBC, which built a multidisciplinary team to understand the employee experience; the Japanese technology company Fujitsu, which reimagined three kinds of “perfect” offices; and the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, which established new roles to coordinate work across the organization. Whether you’re working in a small team or running a multinational, Redesigning Work is the definitive book on how to transform your organization and make hybrid working work for you.
Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Case Based Methods written by David Byrne and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a clear examination of case-oriented research. It defines case-based social research as a subfield of methodology.
Download or read book Process Tracing written by Andrew Bennett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides empirically grounded conceptual, design and practical advice on conducting process tracing, a key method of qualitative research.
Download or read book Mismatch written by Kat Holmes and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods—designing objects with rather than for excluded users—can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all. Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his “Wall of Exclusion,” which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called “sonification” so she can “listen” to the stars. Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
Download or read book Anti System Parties written by Mattia Zulianello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book adopts an innovative conceptualization and analytical framework to the study of anti-system parties, and represents the first monograph ever published on the topic. It features empirical research using original data and combining large-N QCA analyses with a wide range of in-depth case studies from 18 Western European countries. The book adopts a party-centric approach to the study of anti-system formations by focusing on the major turning points faced by such actors after their initial success: long-term electoral sustainability, the different modalities of integration at the systemic level and the electoral impact of transition to government. The author examines in particular the interplay between crucial elements of the internal supply-side of anti-system parties such as their organizational and ideological features, and the political opportunity structure. Anti-System Parties is a major contribution to the literature on populism, anti-establishment parties and comparative political parties.
