Methods of Family Research

Proud sponsor of the 2019 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award―enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

In the 3rd edition of Methods of Family Research, authors Theodore N. Greenstein and Shannon N. Davis continue to help students better understand the research results they encounter in doing family research. Using real-life examples to illustrate important concepts that family researchers encounter regularly, the text covers traditional quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and the mixed-method approach. Written in a clear, concise style, this book differs from other research methods texts, which focus on teaching students how to produce research, by teaching them how to consume research in a sophisticated, effective manner. The book introduces the basic concepts of social science research methods without excessive technical details.

Theodore N. Greenstein is a father, husband, teacher, author, and researcher.  He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University.  He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Washington State University and has been teaching sociology of the family, research methods, and statistics since 1976.  His research program focuses on the intersection of work and family.  His publications on the division of household labor, marital stability, and the effects of maternal employment on child well-being have appeared in Social Forces, the Journal of Marriage and Family, the Journal of Family Issues, and the Journal of Comparative Family Studies.  He is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Southern Sociological Society, the Council on Contemporary Families, and the National Council on Family Relations.

Professor Davis was born and raised in Charlotte, NC. She received her BA in Sociology in 1997 with distinction as an Undergraduate Research Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2004 from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University.  She also spent two years as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Professor Davis′ research has two foci.  One vein of her work focuses on the creation of families and the negotiation of family life.  Specifically, she is interested in how family members negotiate the intersection of paid and unpaid work in their daily lives and how gender inequality is reproduced in families.  Recently, she began investigating the ways married couples are responding to the recent economic recession, and how these responses facilitate and undermine gender equality.