Designing Social Inquiry Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

King, Gary & Robert O. Keohane & Sidney Verba

ISBN 10: 0691034710 / ISBN 13: 9780691034713

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1994

About this Item

6.25 X 0.75 X 9.25 inches; 247 pages; minor rubbing and a couple of tiny smudges on the exterior edges of textblock. Very Good condition otherwise. No other noteworthy defects. No markings. ; Your satisfaction is our priority. We offer free returns and respond promptly to all inquiries. Your item will be carefully cushioned in bubble wrap and securely boxed. All orders ship on the same or next business day. Buy with confidence.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Designing Social Inquiry Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691034710
• ISBN 13: 9780691034713
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: First Edition; Tenth Printing.
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each.


Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

About the Author

Gary King is Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard Data Center at Harvard University. Robert O. Keohane is Stanfield Professor of International Peace at Harvard University. Sidney Verba is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library.