Amazon.com description: Product Description: This acclaimed text offers a comprehensive, systematic treatment of the scientific approach to research within the context of the social sciences. Emphasizing the relationship between theory, research, and practice, the book leads students through seven major, interrelated stages of research methods: definition of the research problem, statement of hypothesis, research design, measurement, data collection, data analysis, and generalization. Research activities are integrated throughout to get students actively involved in the real work of social science research. With its self-contained yet integrated chapters, the text adapts well to either a basic methods course, or a course that covers methods and statistics sequentially. The new edition has been thoroughly updated and revised, and is designed to help students take full advantage of the Internet and other electronic data sources plus the most current statistical software.