Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research / Edition 1

by Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, Sidney Verba

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691034713
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	05/22/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

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.

Read an Excerpt

The _Science_ in Social Science

Table of Contents

Preface

1 The Science in Social Science

2 Descriptive Inference

3 Causality and Causal Inference

4 Determining What to Observe

5 Understanding What to Avoid

6 Increasing the Number of Observations

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Peter Gourevitch

This book has a lot to offer any and all researchers-from senior professional veterans to thesis newcomers at the undergraduate and graduate levels. . . . The authors provide so many examples from current research that the reader can devise strategies for getting the most leverage out of her own research. A must read.
— Peter Gourevitch, University of California at San Diego

From the Publisher

"This book has a lot to offer any and all researchers-from senior professional veterans to thesis newcomers at the undergraduate and graduate levels. . . . The authors provide so many examples from current research that the reader can devise strategies for getting the most leverage out of her own research. A must read."—Peter Gourevitch, University of California at San Diego

Editorial Reviews

"The book is marked by a very careful building up of all concepts; by clear, vivid writing; and by an excellent use of extended examples from the work of such scholars as Nina Halpern, Atul Kohli, and David Laiting."

Journal of Politics

"This book has a lot to offer any and all researchers-from senior professional veterans to thesis newcomers at the undergraduate and graduate levels. . . . The authors provide so many examples from current research that the reader can devise strategies for getting the most leverage out of her own research. A must read."—Peter Gourevitch, University of California at San Diego

From the Publisher