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Designing Social Inquiry

Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, New Edition
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Designing Social Inquiry offers a comprehensive examination of qualitative and quantitative research methods in political science. It explains how both approaches share a common logic of inference, covering key topics like framing research questions, measuring data accuracy, understanding causal effects, and maximising the value of qualitative data. The book also tackles interpretation, comparative case studies, causal theory construction, and issues like selection bias and measurement errors, all explained without requiring prior mathematical knowledge.
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Format: Hardback
$34100

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This book is essential for students and researchers in political science and the social sciences interested in improving their research design and methodology. It is particularly useful for those seeking to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods under a rigorous, unified framework.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The classic work on qualitative methods in political science

Designing Social Inquiry presents a unified approach to qualitative and quantitative research in political science, showing how the same logic of inference underlies both. This stimulating book discusses issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and the uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and getting the most out of qualitative research.

It addresses topics such as interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. The book only uses mathematical notation to clarify concepts and assumes no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics.

Featuring a new preface by Robert O. Keohane and Gary King, this edition makes an influential work available to new generations of qualitative researchers in the social sciences.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780691224633

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 17 August 2021

Country: United States

Imprint: Princeton University Press

Illustration: 3 b/w illus.

Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 235.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 272

About the Author

Gary King is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University. His books include A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem (Princeton). Robert O. Keohane is professor emeritus of international affairs at Princeton University. His books include After Hegemony (Princeton). Sidney Verba (19322019) was the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor Emeritus and research professor of government at Harvard. His books include Unequal and Unrepresented (Princeton). King, Keohane, and Verba have each been elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences.

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