Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change explores the concepts and perspectives that guide research and the methods used to explore change during the last half of the 20th century and into the new millennium. It highlights the complexities of continuities alongside change, the importance of the perspectives that shape investigation, and the need to engage with situated data.

Rosalind Edwards is Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families & Social Capital Research Group at London South Bank University. She has researched and published widely in the field of family studies.

1. Introduction 2. Thinking About Families and Communities Over Time 3. Are Community Studies Still 'Good to Think With'? 4. Rewriting Sexuality and History 5. Families in Black and Minority Ethnic Communities and Social Capital: Past and Continuing False Prophesies in Social Studies 6. Secondary Analysis in Investigating Family Change: Exploring Substantive and Conceptual Questions 7. Recycling the Evidence: Different Approaches to the Reanalysis of Elite Life Histories 8. The Family and Social Change Revisited 9. Capturing Locality Change: The Family and Community Life of Older People 10. The UK Millennium Cohort Study: The Circumstances of Early Motherhood 11. Using Longitudinal Data to Examine Living Alone in England and Wales: 1971-200 12. From Educational Priority Areas to Area-Based Interventions: Community, Neighbourhood and Preschool