Full Description
If you're intimidated by the thought of taking research methods, Rubin and Babbie's classic bestseller can help you overcome the fear factor often associated with this course with its reader-friendly presentation of all aspects of the research endeavor. If you're not intimidated, you'll still appreciate the authors' clear and often humorous writing style as well as the book's depth and breadth of coverage. RESEARCH METHODS FOR SOCIAL WORK, Ninth Edition, strikes an optimal balance of quantitative and qualitative research techniques -- illustrating how the two methods complement one another and can be integrated in the same study. Relevant examples from real-world settings highlight the connections between research and social work practice. Comprehensive, friendly, accurate, and integrating the best of technology, this text is widely considered the best text for the research methods course -- and when you read it, you'll see why.
Contents
Part I: AN INTRODUCTION TO SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN SOCIAL WORK.
1. Why Study Research?
2. Evidence-Based Practice.
3. Factors Influencing the Research Process.
4. Comparing Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods of Inquiry.
Part II: THE ETHICAL, POLITICAL, AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH.
5. The Ethics and Politics of Social Work Research.
6. Culturally Competent Research.
Part III: PROBLEM FORMULATION AND MEASUREMENT.
7. Problem Formulation.
8. Conceptualization in Quantitative and Qualitative Inquiry.
9. Measurement.
10. Constructing Measurement Instruments.
Part IV: DESIGNS FOR EVALUATING PROGRAMS AND PRACTICE.
11. Causal Inference and Experimental Designs.
12. Quasi-Experimental Designs.
13. Single-Case Evaluation Designs.
14. Program Evaluation.
Part V: DATA-COLLECTION METHODS WITH LARGE SOURCES OF DATA.
15. Sampling.
16. Survey Research.
17. Analyzing Existing Data: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods.
Part VI: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS.
18. Qualitative Research: General Principles.
19. Qualitative Research: Specific Methods.
20. Qualitative Data Analysis.
Part VII: ANALYSIS OF QUANTITATIVE DATA.
21. Descriptive Data Analysis.
22. Inferential Data Analysis.
Part VIII: WRITING RESEARCH PROPOSALS AND REPORTS.
23. Writing Research Proposals and Reports.
Appendix A: Using the Library.
Appendix B: Statistics for Estimating Sampling Error.
Appendix C: Critically Appraising Meta-Analyses.
