Making Sense of the Social World is an engaging and innovative introduction to social research for students who need to understand methodologies and results, but who may never conduct the research themselves. It provides a balanced treatment of qualitative and quantitative methods, integrating substantive examples and research techniques, and is written in a less formal style than many comparable texts, with examples drawn from everyday experience: a text that students actually like to read!

The text covers all the essential elements of social research methods including validity, causation, experimental and quasi-experimental design, and techniques of analysis - topics cited as most challenging for students. A student study site with journal articles and online interactive exercises, and chapter examples with emphasis on everyday experiences and current newsworthy issues assist student's understanding.

This Third Edition now contains:

- A new chapter with revised material on evaluation research

- A new chapter on research ethics.

- More contemporary web-based research instruction.

- Updated End-of-chapter exercises, including new ethics exercises.

- Boxed features: "When Things Go Wrong in Social Research"

About the Authors

Daniel F. Chambliss is the Christian A. Johnson "Excellence in Teaching" Professor of Sociology, and Chair of the Sociology Department, at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he has taught since 1981. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1982; later that year, his thesis research received the American Sociological Association’s Medical Sociology Dissertation Prize. In 1988, he published the book Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers, which received the Book of the Year Prize of the United States Olympic Committee. In 1989, he received the ASA’s Theory Prize for work on organizational excellence based on his swimming research. Recipient of both Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, Professor Chambliss published his second book Beyond Caring: Hospitals, Nurses and the Social Organization of Ethics, in 1996; for that work, he was awarded the ASA’s Elliot Freidson Prize in Medical Sociology. His research and teaching interests include organizational analysis, higher education, social theory, and comparative research methods. He is currently Director of the Project for Assessment of Liberal Arts Education at Hamilton College, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is a Member of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Russell K. Schutt, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Lecturer on Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry (Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center) at the Harvard Medical School. He completed his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. (1977) degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University (1977–1979). He has authored and co-authored texts on research methods with Sage Publications and other books on social service issues, including Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness (Harvard University Press, 2011). His recent journal articles and funded research have focused on the organization and effects of innovative public health and social service programs.

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