Designing Socical Inquiry – Scientific Inference In Qualitative Research - Hardcover

King, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691034702 ISBN 13: 9780691034706

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1994

Synopsis

While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each.

Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

About this title

Review

"The book is marked by a very careful building up of all concepts; by clear, vivid writing; and by an excellent use of extended examples from the work of such scholars as Nina Halpern, Atul Kohli, and David Laiting."--Journal of Politics

Synopsis

While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, this monograph outlines a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. The book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and qualitative research designs. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and the uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics addressed are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, the construction of causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed.

The unified logic of inference that this book explicates should be useful to qualitative researchers i

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0691034702
• ISBN 13: 9780691034706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 258