Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 23:06:10 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Dave Alan Coon (:" <dcoon@ksu.edu>
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
cc: Sociology Graduate Students -- International <socgrad@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: rip-roarin' methods texts, exercises
In-Reply-To: <m0wnFUG-000VdSC@vista.hevanet.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.970712225615.28819A-100000@cbs.ksu.ksu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I just completed a graduate course in Social Research Methods, and we 
used the Lofland and Lofland bookk. It is clearly written in an easy to 
understand format. Also another book which we used that dealt with 
qualitative research was _Case_Study_Research_2nd ed, by Robert K. Yin, 
again an easy to understand book that deals with Case Study research in 
POarticular. The Babbie book seems to be pretty much a defacto standard 
for undergrad methods coueses but it gives somewhat of a cursory 
treatment of qualitative methods. Interestingly enough, my undergrad 
methods course did not use Babbie, I think the book was by Szafran and 
Szasfran (sp?) and it focused mainly in quantitative research. Before I 
started grad school it is almost as if I was under the impression that 
all research must be quantitative, I have since learned that this is not 
the case at all.  I can see the value of other types of research like 
Femminist methods, although given my hard core science background, I 
still have a hard time grasping less objective femminist methods or 
qualitative methods, I certainly see the value of these methods, but many 
of them run totally contrary to the whole idea of scientific 
investigation in hte eyes of some, particularly those in math, physics, 
and statistics. Personally, I feel that at the heart of scientific 
investigation is the desire to gain knowledge and understanding and some 
things are more easily understood not by numbers and statitics but by 
real world observations/expierences like those in qualitative methods.

Sincerely,

David Coon 
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~dcoon 
MA Student & Graduate Teaching Asst.
Dept. of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work  http://www.ksu.edu/sasw/
Kansas State University    
==============================================================================
Ideas that are real 'are real in their consequences' paraphrase of W.I. Thomas
==============================================================================