This textbook has been on my mind since 1994, when I sat in my own undergraduate sociology research methods class, enjoying the material but also wondering about its relevance to my everyday life and future plans (the idea that one day I would be teaching such a class hadn’t yet occurred to me).
While the importance of understanding research methods is usually clear to students who intend to pursue an advanced degree, I’ve long thought that we research methods teachers could do a better job of demonstrating to all of our students the relevance of what it is that we’re teaching.
Today, as an active researcher who uses both qualitative and quantitative methods, I appreciate the need not only for students to understand the relevance of research methods for themselves but also for them to understand the relevance of both qualitative and quantitative techniques for sociological inquiry. Also, as a teacher I have learned that students will simply not read what they perceive to be boring, full of jargon, or overly technical. Together, my experiences as a student, researcher, and teacher shape the three overriding objectives of this text: relevance, balance, and accessibility.
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