Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods

Front Cover
Leonard Bickman, Debra J. Rog
SAGE, 1998 - Psychology - 580 pages
The Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods provides a complete resource to guide your decisions for all your applied research questions. The book's emphasis is on finding the tools that best fit the research question given the constraints of deadlines, budget, and staff available. It will show you how to make intelligent and conscious tradeoffs so that you refine and hone the research question as new knowledge is gained, unanticipated obstacles encountered, or contextual shifts take place - key elements in the iterative nature of applied research. The book also describes how to frame the results so that they can reach the attention of decision makers and other potential users of the research.
 

Contents

Planning Applied Research
1
Statistical Power for Applied
39
Designing a Qualitative Study
69
Practical Sampling
101
Planning Ethically Responsible Research
127
Applied Research Framework
157
Quasiexperimentation
193
Process and Techniques
261
Practical Data Collection and Analysis Methods
339
Practical Aspects of Interview Data Collection
375
Mail Surveys
399
Methods for Sampling and Interviewing
429
Ethnography
473
Exploration and Discovery
505
Graphing Data
527
Index
557

Formative Evaluation of Costs CostEffectiveness
285
Research Synthesis and Metaanalysis
315
About the Editors
573
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

Leonard Bickman, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Public Policy. He is director of the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement and Associate Dean for Research at Peabody College. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology (social) from the City University of New York, his master′s degree in experimental psychopathology from Columbia University and his bachelor′s from the City College of New York. Professor Bickman is a nationally recognized leader in program evaluation and mental healthservices research on children and adolescents. He has published more than 15 books and monographs and 180 articles and chapters and has been principal investigator on over 25 major grants from several agencies. He is co-editor of the Applied Research Methods Series published by Sage Publications since 1980. He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Applied Social Research and is collaborating on a new International Handbook of Social Research. He is the co-author of the very popular book Applied Research Design: A Practical Guide. Debra J. Rog, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Associate with the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement (CEPI), and directs its Washington office. She has over 25 years of experience in program evaluation and applied research and has directed numerous multi-site evaluations and research projects involving issues of poverty, homelessness, housing and services for vulnerable populations including children and families, mental health, and others. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of a Coordinating Center for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration′s Homeless Families Initiative, and two foundation-funded cross-site evaluations of local collaboratives focused on violence prevention.Dr. Rog has to her credit numerous publications on evaluation methodology, housing, homelessness, poverty, mental health, and program and policy development and has edited numerous substantive and methodological volumes, including the Applied Social Research Methods Series and the Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods. She has served on the Board of Directors of the American Evaluation Association, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Public Health Association. She completed an appointment on the Advisory Committee of Women′s Services for the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and has been recognized for her evaluation work by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Evaluation Association, the Eastern Evaluation Research Society, and the Knowledge Utilization Society.

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