SOCIAL SCIENCE / Research

This unique study of social work provides a bold and challenging view of the subject from an anthropological perspective. Combining research and personal reflection, it explores cultural and symbolic representations of social work, evolving identities of social work practitioners and the ways in which they and society now view one another.

Using insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict across the world, this book provides essential practical guidance, discussion of mistakes, key reflections and raises important questions for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent and closed contexts.

Systemic Action Research explains how systemic thinking works and how it can be embedded into organisational structures and processes to catalyse sustainable change and critical local interventions.

This valuable textbook provides an accessible, pragmatic how-to guide for using participatory methods in research. Providing practical advice, real-world examples, and packed with reflective questions, top tips and suggested further reading, this book will be an essential resource for students and researchers alike.

In this book, Daniela Aidley and Kriss Fearon provide a practical introduction to making it easier for everyone to take part in research. It will be invaluable to researchers from a variety of backgrounds looking to increase participation in their research, whether postgraduate students, experienced academic researchers, or practitioners.

A logically ordered guide to analysing everyday problems, SPSS Step by Step is distinctive in being both easy to grasp and readable.

This book examines the values of interactive documentary as a social research method, exploring their exciting potential for illuminating and communicating pressing social issues. Providing a template for planning an i-doc, the novel book shows how the planning process alone can open new ways of understanding social research topics.

This practical handbook is aimed at students who are new to phenomenograpy - a popular research method for its versatility in understanding people’s perceptions. Enabling readers to decide on the appropriateness of the phenomenographic approach for their own research project, it equips them with the necessary tools to embark on their journey.

Over the past decades ‘photovoice’ has emerged as a participatory and creative research method where participants capture and discuss their reality through photographs. This unprecedented ‘how-to’ book takes novice and experienced researchers through the practicalities and ethics of applying this approach.

Written key names in the field, this book opens up the options for creativity and innovation in data analysis while retaining a systematic, rigorous and ethical approach in line with good research practice.

Featuring transferable case examples across disciplines, this is the definitive practical guide to creative data analysis.

Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place, presenting a ‘how to’ for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.

This practical and accessible guide shows how police forces of all sizes can successfully adopt evidence-based methods. Drawing on experiences of North American policing, it sets out ways for decision makers to reshape practices, strategies and organizational structures and overcome barriers to change.