Research Methods: A Practical Guide for the Social Sciences is an essential resource for the social researcher. It offers a comprehensive introduction for first time researchers right through to thorough and practical advice for those undertaking more advanced work. The book draws on real life experiences from a wide variety of disciplines to show how theory translates into practice, and offers a rigorous analysis of why researchers choose the methods they use.

Think about it boxes throughout...

Shooting Incident Reconstruction, Second Edition, offers a thorough explanation of matters from simple to complex to help the reader understand the factors surrounding ballistics, trajectory, and shooting scenes. Forensic scientists, law enforcement, and crime scene investigators are often tasked with reconstruction of events based on crime scene evidence, along with the subsequent analysis of that evidence. The use and misuse of firearms to perpetrate crimes from theft to murder necessitates...

Joining Together introduces readers to the theory and research needed to understand how to make groups effective and, through exercises and thorough explanations, equips them with the skills required to apply that knowledge to practical situations. Chapters discuss the history of groups and group dynamics, the nature of experiential learning, group goals, communication within groups, leadership, power, decision making, controversy and creativity, and conflict management. More applied chapters...

This introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, revealing the rich global variation in social life and culture across the world. Presenting a clear overview of anthropology, it focuses on central topics such as kinship, ethnicity, ritual and political systems, offering a wealth of examples that demonstrate the enormous scope of anthropology and the importance of a comparative perspective. Unlike other texts on the subject, Small Places, Large Issues incorpor...

Leading the reader from the fundamental principles of inorganic chemistry, right through to cutting-edge research at the forefront of the subject, Inorganic Chemistry, Seventh Edition is the ideal course companion for the duration of a student's degree. The authors have drawn upon their extensive teaching and research experience to update this text; the seventh edition retains the much-praised clarity of style and layout from previous editions, while offering an enhanced section on 'expanding...

Just as newspapers do not, typically, engage with the ordinary experiences of people's daily lives, so organizational studies has also tended largely to ignore the humdrum, everyday experiences of people working in organizations. However, ethnographic approaches provide in-depth and up-close understandings of how the 'everyday-ness' of work is organized and how, in turn, work itself organizes people and the societies they inhabit. Organizational Ethnography brings contributions from leading s...

The third edition of Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, the highly praised innovative approach to introducing aspects of cultural anthropology to students, features a series of revisions, updates, and new material. * Offers a refreshing alternative to introductory anthropology texts by challenging students to think in new ways and apply cultural learnings to their own lives * Chapters explore key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, ...

In the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, far from the hustle and noise of urban centers, lies a village made of mud and rock, barely discernible from the surrounding landscape. Yet a closer look reveals a carefully planned community of homes nestled above the trees, where rock slides are least frequent, and steep terraces of barley fields situated just above spring flood level. The Berber-speaking Muslims who live and farm on these precipitous mountainsides work together at the arduous task of...

"Designing research is about making decisions to transform an idea into a plan that can provide answers to a research problem or question. Thinking about, and then making these decisions results in the research design – the plan that will be followed to conduct the research and answer the question. This text engages in a dialogue with the reader, providing a serious but accessible introduction to research design, for use as a guide when designing your own research or when reading the resear...

Written by bestselling author Larry Siegel, CRIMINOLOGY, 8th Edition, guides you through the fast-paced field of modern criminology, its most current research and fascinating examples that help you understand criminological theory. Details on the crimes of real-life people illustrate concepts, while unbiased coverage of even the most controversial topics -- ranging from responses to sexual assault on campus to cybercrime -- enables you to form your own opinions about current issues and events...