Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153481 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 239 pages

Synopsis
Designed to help students learn how to think about research projects, this guide offers suggestions which cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the "imagery" to guide research; methods of "sampling" to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of "concepts" to organize findings; and the use of "logical" methods to explore systematically the implications of what is found. The advice ranges from simple tricks such as changing an interview question from "Why?" to "How?" (as a way of getting people to talk without asking for a justification) to more technical tricks such as how to manipulate truth tables. Drawing from a variety of fields such as art history, anthropology, sociology, literature and philosophy, the author ranges from James Agee to Ludwig Wittgenstein, to find the common principles which lie behind good social science work, principles that apply to both quantitative and qualitative research.

Customer Reviews

Becker's Guide to Complicating your Methodological Analysis without falling into chaos.
Becker's Guide to Complicating your Methodological Analysis without falling into chaos.

Assuming you are armed with and thoroughly trained in Research Methods ( I'm not yet!) This book will add to your range of armoury by expanding your perspectives and helping you to launch out into unchartered waters without feeling too insecure. This should be read along with Booth' The Craft of Research' as I am only half way through it raises important but entirely complimentary questions which address the insecurities coming from the unknown questions that feature in any real research. ( My 'research puts me into the Unknown without any guiding posts only asking questions getting them answered, asking deeper questions and so forth).

I like Becker because he takes an sympathetic organic and curiosity driven approach to his Research. His comment about The Academy not liking it's Research methodologies being applied to it is a moot point (Becker 1998,218) as he did Research into Campus life pp210-212). He is inspired rightly by Jazz, he is inspired rightly IMHO by LIFE and to my my way of thinking is more grass roots than your average Academic and I believe it makes him a Winner as evidence d by his academic awards and status in the Academic community as a whole.
In this book he gives the Reader the tools to go beyond the current range of available methodologies and THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX a key skill for would be Social Scientists: this he does by employing IMAGERY, SAMPLING TRICKS, TRICKS, AND LOGIC with the important proviso that one practices these tricks until they are second nature (p218 Coda) and become that Dragon.
It is a must for all interested in academic Research and I would recommend it for Autodidacts to inspire their studies which take all sorts of peculiar routes as a form of challenging encouragements. This is also a book for the Service User Research Scene in the UK and elsewhere.
He self -consciously and shamelessly writes for the Social Science Community but this book has wider implication for other Disciplines who are too locked up in their methodology to see beyond to what can be offered by other Disciplines. What this book will give you is the courage to learn how to revise your findings in the light of new evidence as Hughes does and that is a commendable practice. A First Class Read from a First Class Author. Written by a self-confessed Autodidact in highly marginalised and adverse circumstances.

Addresses the research process in an easy to understand way.
I am posed on the brink of my proposal and have been reading similar books about writing and research. This one is by far one of the best. Howard Becker is having a conversation with the reader about doing research in the social sciences. I find the concepts easy to follow and feel that his ideas have a universal applicability. I enjoy Dr. Becker's writing style, which is light on the jargon and heavy on the realities of graduate school.