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Purchase Benefits
What is included with this book?
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes | p. viii |
Preface | p. xi |
List of Abbreviations | p. xii |
Introduction: Methods, Methodology and Making Sense of the Study of Politics | p. 1 |
Guiding themes | p. 2 |
Structure of the book | p. 5 |
The Discipline of Politics | p. 9 |
The diverse traditions of political science | p. 9 |
Dominant paradigms | p. 19 |
Political studies or political science: some methodological considerations | p. 30 |
Research Design and the Research Process | p. 38 |
The meaning of research design | p. 39 |
The research process | p. 45 |
The research labyrinth | p. 53 |
Types of research design | p. 55 |
Conclusion | p. 68 |
Comparative Methods | p. 69 |
Comparative political science: substance and method | p. 70 |
Designing comparative research | p. 73 |
Why compare? The advantages | p. 80 |
The limits of comparison | p. 83 |
Cases: how many, and which? | p. 87 |
Conclusion | p. 94 |
Surveys, Polls and Focus Groups | p. 96 |
Surveys, opinion polls and politics | p. 97 |
History of opinion polls and surveys | p. 99 |
Sampling procedures | p. 102 |
Types of sample design | p. 103 |
Administering surveys | p. 108 |
Interviewing | p. 123 |
Coding and analysis | p. 125 |
Focus groups | p. 128 |
Conclusion | p. 136 |
Descriptive Statistics | p. 138 |
Levels of measurement, central tendency and spread | p. 140 |
Choosing descriptive statistics | p. 151 |
Presenting descriptive statistics | p. 153 |
All that glitters ... | p. 166 |
Conclusion | p. 169 |
Making Inferences | p. 171 |
What is inference? | p. 172 |
Inference - logic and problems | p. 177 |
Inferences in political science | p. 179 |
Conclusion | p. 186 |
Documentary and Archival Analysis | p. 187 |
Use and abuse of secondary and tertiary documentary sources in political science | p. 190 |
The analysis of primary sources | p. 195 |
Research in the Public Record Office (the UK's National Archives) and the National Archives, Washington | p. 200 |
Conclusion: the value and limits of documentary and archival analysis | p. 208 |
The Internet and Political Research | p. 213 |
Searching the internet | p. 216 |
Electronic resources for political research | p. 218 |
Online polling | p. 224 |
Elite interviewing online | p. 228 |
Conclusions | p. 230 |
Elite Interviewing | p. 231 |
Decide who you want to see | p. 233 |
Get access and arrange the interview | p. 235 |
Conduct the interview | p. 238 |
Analyse the results | p. 245 |
Conclusions | p. 246 |
Discourse Analysis and Other Methods | p. 248 |
Discourse analysis | p. 249 |
Content analysis | p. 259 |
The advantages and limitations of content analysis | p. 264 |
Participant observation | p. 264 |
Conclusion | p. 281 |
Ethics and Political Research | p. 282 |
The nature of ethical problems | p. 283 |
Two broad approaches to ethical problems | p. 284 |
Five basic ethical principles | p. 286 |
The relationship with sponsors | p. 288 |
Gatekeepers | p. 292 |
Citizens | p. 295 |
The problem of fraud in research | p. 296 |
Professional codes of conduct | p. 298 |
Conclusions | p. 303 |
Research and the Policy Process | p. 305 |
The demand side: what policymakers want from researchers | p. 305 |
The supply side: what researchers can provide | p. 310 |
The mediating effect of national structures and cultures | p. 313 |
Bridging the gap | p. 318 |
How could the contribution of research to policymaking be improved? | p. 322 |
Conclusion | p. 324 |
Conclusion: Challenging the Mainstream and the Qualitative/Quantitative Divide | p. 325 |
Feminist methods? | p. 325 |
Anti-racist and Marxist challenges | p. 330 |
Theory, methods and the qualitative/quantitative divide | p. 331 |
Suggestions for Further Reading | p. 335 |
References | p. 340 |
Index | p. 361 |
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The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.