Questioning Numbers: How to Read and Critique Research - Softcover

Wilkins, Karin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199747393 ISBN 13: 9780199747399

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Questioning Numbers: How to Read and Critique Research is a critical companion for students in research methods courses in any of the social sciences. This book helps teach students how to read and critique research that employs numbers in the course of empirical argument. Author Karin Gwinn Wilkins provides a list of guidelines for reading research and also presents a critical approach to judging and using numbers in navigating and changing social worlds.

Illuminating the agendas and politics that can inform how research is conducted and interpreted, this text shows readers how to read and critique research contexts, research design, sampling strategies, definitions, research implementation, data analysis, and interpretation. It also provides strong pedagogical support, including key terms, review exercises, and end-of-chapter reflection questions.

A flexible supplement to more comprehensive research texts, Questioning Numbers helps students to become more critical consumers and producers of quantitative research across the social sciences.

About this title

About the Author

Karin Gwinn Wilkins is a Professor in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin.

Review

"A handy-dandy methods supplement that really does a great job of helping students understand why scholars make the choices they do in research design and implementation."--David M. Rhea, Governors State University

"This book offers students a different lens to think about all scholarship, including questions about research design and power, who funds scholarship, who is privileged (and who is left out) of research, and who gets to approve and to deny the practice of scholarship. The book gives students the language necessary to ask fundamental questions about scholarly methods that are often assumed to be true or that are typically unquestioned. Students, like Americans in general, have grown up with the notion that science is objective and provides a superior form of understanding the world, when in fact the scientific method does create an argument, often around numbers, that should be examined with a critical eye."--Brant Short, Northern Arizona University

"The book does a good job of showing students how to read and critique research that uses numbers. After reading this book, students will understand how research context, selection, definition, implementation, analysis, and interpretation can impact data. And understanding this context is very useful to students."--Gonzalo R. Soruco, University of Miami

"A wonderful resource that will encourage students to critically examine the impact of numbers in their lives. Karin Gwinn Wilkins's examination of the social, political, and psychological ramifications of empirical conclusions will ensure that students never take research for granted again."--Andrea Lambert, Northern Kentucky University

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0199747393
• ISBN 13: 9780199747399
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128