Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies

by William G. Axinn, Lisa D. Pearce

Overview

Social scientists have long relied on a wide range of tools to collect information about the social world, but as individual fields have become more specialised, researchers are trained to use a narrow range of the possible data collection methods. This book, first published in 2006, draws on a broad range of available social data collection methods to formulate a set of data collection approaches. The approaches described here are ideal for social science researchers who plan to collect new data about people, organisations, or social processes. Axinn and Pearce present methods designed to create a comprehensive empirical description of the subject being studied, with an emphasis on accumulating the information needed to understand what causes what with a minimum of error. In addition to providing methodological motivation and underlying principles, the book is filled with detailed instructions and concrete examples for those who wish to apply the methods to their research.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521855686
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/02/2006
Series:	New Perspectives on Anthropological and Social Demography
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

William G. Axinn is a Sociologist Demographer and Research Professor at the Survey Research Center and Population Studies Center of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He has directed the Population and Ecology Research Laboratory in Nepal for thirteen years. In the United States he is co-Principal Investigator of the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children (a 31-year longitudinal study) and Deputy Director of the National Survey of Family Growth (a national repeated cross-section study of US families conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics).

Lisa D. Pearce is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research articles have appeared in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Sociological Methodology, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. She is Co-Principal Investigator of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a three-year, multi-method panel study of the role of religion in the lives of American youth. In Nepal, she is co-Investigator on the large scale population and environment project directed by Axinn. She was recently selected as a 2005 William T. Grant Scholar to further her work on religion and well-being among youth.

Table of Contents

1. Motivations for mixed method social research; 2. Fitting data collection methods to research aims; 3. The micro-demographic community study approach; 4. Systematic anomalous case analysis; 5. Neighborhood history calendars; 6. Life history calendars; 7. Longitudinal data collection; 8. Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"This book provides the motivation for rethinking various data collection techniques and serves as a field guide to particular tools that can be used as they are, with some modification, or as inspiration for the creation of new mixed method strategies...Its focus on the role of the researcher should be of value to social scientists involved in field research and to those who are not." - Studies in Family Planning

"...a useful addition to the literature on mixed methods research..." - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"There are now a fair number of book-length treatments of mixed-methods approaches, each with their strengths and weaknesses.... However, it is fair to say that the existing literature does not speak as directly to the needs and concerns of development economists as the book under review by William Axinn and Lisa Pearce." - Economic Development and Cultural Change

From the Publisher