Methodological Thinking focuses on the underlying logic of social research and encourages students to understand research methods as a way of thinking. Donileen R. Loseke provides an overview of the basic principles of social research, including the foundations of research (data, concepts, theory), the characteristics of research questions, the importance of literature reviews, measurement (conceptualization and operationalization), data generation techniques (experiments, surveys, interviews, observation, document analysis), and sampling. The text is organized to help students become good consumers and producers of research by developing skills to design small-scale research projects and evaluate research done by others. Extracts from a number of journal articles in the appendix illustrate the discussion presented, and full-text versions of the articles are available on an accompanying website. The Second Edition includes a revised chapter on research foundations, including more on philosophy of science, and ethics; more coverage of sampling; more focus on critical thinking; and a new selection of journal articles that are more accessible to an undergraduate audience, draw from more disciplines outside of sociology, and including more that are quantitatively focused.
