Research Methods

I highly recommend this book to any social science researcher, not just the beginners intended as the primary audience. It helps remind everyone of the fundamentals that all good research should be based on. Nachmias & Nachmias do an excellent job of clarifying sometimes difficult to understand concepts. They present basic statistical and mathematical ideas in a way designed not to scare off those of us not so good with numbers. At the same time, they cover a vast number of relevant topics. Comprehensive is the only word to use. Only quibble: really expensive! Otherwise it's fantastic.

I used this book for methodology class, thou the official textbook was the more common book of Bailey. I did so for several reasons.1. incidentally I had not Bailey's but this book because I used this book to prepare graduate entrance exam.2. as u know, there are not much differences among textbooks on research methods for this field might be the only area in consensus on social sciences.This book has some weak points just like other textbooks including Bailey's. this book concentrates on quantitative methods and not much deal with qualitative methods which occupy mere 20 pages. But I have to mention 2 strong points 1. The author presents concepts in graphic way with vivid details of research examples and illustrating live logic of field. Thou good researcher could be only with practices, it will be good to have some touch of real logic of concept in real field2. the author put the system over various methods like observation, survey, interview etc with the logic of causation. This is why this book begins research design part with experiment which is rarely used in social sciences except psychology. Experiment is not practical one in social sciences but it's the model of all other research methods for its design meets all the condition of causation. So when we design out research, we should bear the experiment in mind. This point is maintained throughout the book. And this made the content of the book systematic

This is the sixth edition, which means that the still probably useful fifth and previous editions are now good for landfill duty. The price is hefty. (Why don't textbook publishers offer financing?) That said, this is a usable book, one that the reader might be tempted not to sell after class is over. The research and statistics chapters are well-written and placed in logical order. The material is comprehensive, and strikes a nice balance between not being too technical without being too elementary. What appealed to me was the by-the-numbers approach, with numerous lists embedded in the text throughout. (For example, if there are seven factors to consider in reference to the internal validity of a research design, they are boxed off and numbered, after being discussed in the text.) The book comes with a disk containing a 1996 general survey of social science issues. This is provided by way of example, and is referenced at the end of most chapters as a real-world example and 'how to' guide to research methedology and design. Nonetheless, you can do as I did, and read without using the disk (I used it once), and still come away with complete understanding. This book is also free of the filler that crowds and obscures useful information in the garden variety textbook. This book would have gotten five stars, had it not been for the authors' annoying habit of using liberal examples. In a social science research text, reference to politically sensetive issues is to be expected. What annoys is that virtually every example, whether derived from real life, or an admittedly ficticous example, is given a liberal slant. If the factors being researched are education and political orientation, then liberalism correlates with higher education (read: conservatives are dummies). If the subject is nominal variables, the example is party affiliation in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans two-to-one. In other words, the examples serve the standard orthodoxies of our time. Don't expect to see any on race and abortion, or the use of guns to deter crime. That said, since the main users of this book are college students, and as such are getting much heavier doses of campus radicalism and causes du jour, this book's bias is relatively mild. If you are going to study research methodologies, you could do much worse than this text. -Lloyd Conway

I have used this text in my introductory level research class for several years. I find it to be well designed and clearly written. The authors make good use of real life examples to claarify complex topics. The text almost teaches itself.