Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It

Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It

Becker, Howard S.

Paperback

Series: Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing

Writing InstructionGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0226041247
ISBN13: 9780226041247
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: Jan 19 1998
Pages: 239
Weight: 0.66
Height: 0.67 Width: 5.47 Depth: 8.41
Language: English
A classic guidebook from a master teacher and landmark researcher

Drawing on decades of experience as a researcher and teacher, Howard Becker brings to students and researchers the many valuable techniques for conducting research that he learned and taught. Tricks of the Trade will help students learn how to think about research projects. Assisted by Becker's sage advice, students can make better sense of their research and simultaneously generate fresh ideas on where to look next for new data. The tricks cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the imagery to guide research; methods of sampling to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of concepts to organize findings; and the use of logical methods to explore systematically the implications of what is found. Becker's advice ranges from simple tricks such as changing an interview question from Why? to How? (as a way of getting people to talk without asking for a justification) to more technical tricks such as how to manipulate truth tables.

Becker has extracted these tricks from a variety of fields such as art history, anthropology, sociology, literature, and philosophy; and his dazzling variety of references ranges from James Agee to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Becker finds the common principles that lie behind good social science work, principles that apply to both quantitative and qualitative research. He offers practical advice, ideas students can apply to their data with the confidence that they will return with something they hadn't thought of before.

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