Finding Your Social Science Project: The Research Sandbox

John Gerring (University of Texas, Austin),Jason Seawright (Northwestern University, Illinois)

Finding Your Social Science Project: The Research Sandbox
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Published
31 July 2022
Pages
338
ISBN
9781009114912

Finding Your Social Science Project: The Research Sandbox

John Gerring (University of Texas, Austin),Jason Seawright (Northwestern University, Illinois)

The most important step in social science research is the first step - finding a topic. Unfortunately, little guidance on this crucial and difficult challenge is available. Methodological studies and courses tend to focus on theory testing rather than theory generation. This book aims to redress that imbalance. The first part of the book offers an overview of the book’s central concerns. How do social scientists arrive at ideas for their work? What are the different ways in which a study can contribute to knowledge in a field? The second part of the book offers suggestions about how to think creatively, including general strategies for finding a topic and heuristics for discovery. The third part of the book shows how data exploration may assist in generating theories and hypotheses. The fourth part of the book offers suggestions about how to fashion disparate ideas into a theory.

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