My edited methods book Research Confidential is out! I had asked for feedback about the title and cover illustration here on CT and accordingly have acknowledged the readers of this blog in the Preface (see snapshot below) including an explicit shout-out to reader Vivian for inspiring the subtitle of the book: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have.
Today’s Inside Higher Ed has a Q&A with me about some questions related to the book such as why I opted for asking relatively junior scholars for contributions rather than going with more experienced senior researchers. Recently, the Chronicle also featured a Q&A with me about the chapter I co-authored with Chris Karr describing diary-data collection using text-messages.
Many thanks to the contributors of the volume for agreeing to respond to my somewhat unorthodox request to write about the behind-the-scenes dirty details of their research projects. If you’d like to read these, various online stores (e.g., Amazon, B&N, Michigan Press) are selling the volume.
{ 9 comments }
Trey 10.30.09 at 1:01 pm
Any plans for a Kindle edition?
Ciarán 10.30.09 at 3:38 pm
Hmm interesting. The Amazon UK page seems to think the book has a different title.
Won’t stop me buying it though!
bfeinberg 10.30.09 at 4:11 pm
Thank you! Much needed and hardly “dirty”: it’s the work of researching, tout court!
Doctor Science 10.30.09 at 11:13 pm
Wow, looks great, Eszther. Is Clawson’s paper about DailyKos? Which communities did Williams and Li study? Walejko’s paper sounds like it could be about SurveyFail this past summer, but it must be something earlier.
Witt 10.31.09 at 4:47 am
Very exciting! Congratulations, and thanks especially for putting your talents to work in a very practical way.
trane 10.31.09 at 8:10 am
Congratulations. The book looks exciting and inspiring.
Eszter Hargittai 10.31.09 at 3:25 pm
Thanks for all the kind words.
Trey, thanks for asking about a Kindle edition, I’ve asked the publisher about it, not sure what logistics are involved.
Ciarán, oy, still? That was the original title, but the US Amazon switched it to the right one by the time the book was out. At least UK Amazon has the right cover.:) (Then again, there was never a cover with the other title so it would take a lot to get that wrong.;)
Doctor Science, nope, Laura’s (Clawson) paper is about ethnographic research she did for her dissertation and the challenges of studying a community of which you yourself are a member. I guess a similar theme could apply to Daily Kos, but I don’t know if Laura’s actually done research on that community. Dmitri (Williams) and his co-author talk about the logistics of studying gamers and discuss several such projects constituting different communities. As to Gina’s (Walejko) project, to be sure, while she may have received feedback of various types on her survey, the general reaction was nowhere near the one described about the SurveyFail project! Gina’s was a successful project in the end, but with lots of helpful lessons learned along the way, which is what she describes in detail in her piece.
vivian 11.02.09 at 11:20 pm
Congratulations! I hope the book is as popular among the faculty as among the students, so the innocent actually hear about it in time to change their lives.
mohan 11.04.09 at 6:07 am
The Amazon UK page seems to think the book has a different title.
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