Written by internationally renowned experts, the Fourth Edition provides a complete introduction to the research process making it the perfect hand-holder for any social science student starting a methods course or project.

Chapter 1: Introduction and guide to using this book - Clive Seale
Part 1: Starting out
Chapter 2: Philosophy, politics and values - Clive Seale
Chapter 3: Research and theory - David Silverman
Chapter 4: Ethics and social research - Suki Ali and Moira Kelly
Chapter 5: Doing a literature review - Duncan Branley, Clive Seale and Thomas Zacharias
Chapter 6: Research questions and proposals - Moira Kelly
Chapter 7: Research design - Clare Robinson and Clive Seale
Chapter 8: The dissertation - Chetan Bhatt
Part 2: Generating data
Chapter 9: Sampling - Clive Seale
Chapter 10: Questionnaires and interviews - Clive Seale
Chapter 11: Questions, measurements and structured observation - Clive Seale
Chapter 12: Qualitative interviewing - Bridget Byrne
Chapter 13: Focus groups - Fran Tonkiss
Chapter 14: Doing ethnography - David Walsh and Clive Seale
Chapter 15: Grounded theory - Clive Seale
Chapter 16: Doing historical and documentary research - Ben Gidley
Chapter 17: Combining qualitative and quantitative methods - Neil Spicer
Chapter 18: Digital Social Research - Clive Seale
Part 3: Doing Analysis
Chapter 19: Preparing data for statistical analysis - Clive Seale
Chapter 20: Analysing single variables - Clive Seale
Chapter 21: Bivariate analysis - Clive Seale
Chapter 22: Causal arguments and multivariate analysis - Clive Seale
Chapter 23: Secondary analysis - Clive Seale
Chapter 24: Content and text analysis - Clive Seale and Fran Tonkiss
Chapter 25: Finding themes in qualitative data - Carol Rivas
Chapter 26: Visual analysis - Suki Ali
Chapter 27: Discourse analysis - Fran Tonkiss
Chapter 28: Analysing conversation - Tim Rapley
Chapter 29: Narrative analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis - Ann Griffin and Vanessa May
Part 4: Writing, Presenting, Reflecting
Chapter 30: Writing a research report - Carol Rivas
Chapter 31: Giving oral presentations - David Silverman
Chapter 32: Research quality - Clive Seale