Intelligent Research Design

A Guide for Beginning Researchers in the Social Sciences

Bibliographic Data

ID19969588
AuthorsBob Hancké (0000-0002-3334-231X, corresponding author)
Year2009
Publication date2009-07-16
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueIntelligent research design (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780199570782.001.0001
OpenAlexW4388133480
ISBN9780199570782
LanguageEN
Citations received19

This book offers advice to doctoral researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students on how to embark on their research. Based on a decade of teaching early-stage researchers in the social sciences at the LSE and other universities, and written with the central problems of beginning researchers in mind, Bob Hancké guides them through the process of thinking about the links between theory, cases and data, and to do so in a way that helps to turn their initial plausible ideas into convincing arguments. This lively book, deliberately jargon-free and with a hands-on, pragmatic approach to research design, addresses the problems that research students face - or ignore, often at their peril - in the course of their first few years. Its central message is that research is a complex and iterative process in which researchers construct every relevant part of their project with one goal in mind: make a persuasive point. They define the question they ask and the debate they engage, construct their cases and data to answer that question, and write it up as an argument that brings out the strengths of their research design. It addresses such key issues as statistical versus configurational approaches, time in social science research, different types of case studies and comparative research, and a critical approach to data. The Appendix gives tips on presenting and discussing papers, and on crafting research proposals

Argument (complex analysis) · Construct (python library) · Data science · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Jargon · Management science · Mathematics education · Point (geometry) · Process (computing) · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Engineering · Psychology · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research · Qualitative Research Methods and Applications · Social Science and Policy Research

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