Making Sense of the Social World, fourth edition is an engaging introduction to social research for students who need to understand methodologies and results, but who may never conduct research themselves. It provides a balanced treatment of qualitative and quantitative methods, integrating substantive examples and research techniques throughout. It is written in a less formal style than many comparable texts, complete with practical examples drawn from everyday experience.
Daniel F. Chambliss, PhD, is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he has taught since 1981. He received his PhD 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 from the U.S. Olympic Committee. In 1989, he received the American Sociology Association’s Theory Prize for work on organizational excellence based on his swimming research. Recipient of both Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, he 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. In 2014 he published How College Works, co-authored with his former student Christopher G. Takacs. His research and teaching interests include organizational analysis, higher education, social theory, and comparative research methods.
Russell K. Schutt (PhD, MA, BA, University of Illinois at Chicago; postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University) is professor and chair of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and lecturer on sociology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. In addition to Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research, now in its Eighth Edition, and its co-authored adaptations for the disciplines of social work, criminal justice, psychology, and education, his books include Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness, Social Neuroscience: Brain, Mind, and Society (co-edited), and Organization in a Changing Environment. His scholarship focuses on the bidirectional relationship between individuals and their social environment, its consequences for organizational change, cognitive functioning, and individual behavior, and its predictors in individual orientations and community contexts. His related articles have been published in journals ranging from the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, Law and Society Review, and the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation to the Journal of Community Health, Journal of Community Psychology, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Women and Health, Evaluation & Program Planning, and the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. His major research projects have been funded by the Veterans Health Administration, the National Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, the John E. Fetzer Institute, and state and local sources. In addition to research methods and statistics, he teaches the sociology of complex organizations and the sociology of law.
