Preface
This book is based on two open–access textbooks: Bhattacherjee’s (2012) Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices and Blackstone’s (2012) Principles of Sociological Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. I first used Bhattacherjee’s book in a graduate-level criminal justice research methods course. I chose the book because it was an open educational resource covering the major topics in my course. While I found the book adequate for my purposes, the business school perspective did not always fit with my criminal justice focus. I decided to rewrite the textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in my criminal justice research methods courses. As I researched other open-educational resources for teaching social science research methods, I found Blackstone’s book, which covered more of the social science and qualitative methods perspectives I wanted to incorporate into my book.
As a result, this open-access textbook includes some content from both previous works, with my additions based on extensive experience and expertise in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in social science settings and mentoring students through the research process. My Ph.D. is in Sociology, and I currently teach undergraduate and graduate students in a criminal justice program at Weber State University. Throughout my career, I have conducted and published the results of research projects using various methods, including surveys, case studies, in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis, and secondary analysis of quantitative data. I have also mentored undergraduates in conducting community-based research projects using many of these same methods, with the addition of focus groups and program evaluations.
In this book, I have extensively cut, reordered, revised, and edited information from the two original textbooks and added new material from my expertise. I have also added examples relevant to criminal justice students and end-of-chapter resources, such as key terms and discussion questions, to provoke a more in-depth understanding of important ideas in each chapter. Finally, I have worked with my university’s instructional designers to ensure this book meets accessibility standards. For example, a sans-serif font and 1.5–spaced lines are used to increase the accessibility of the text for students who rely on screen readers.
Throughout the book, I have tried to forego academic jargon in favor of a more conversational tone appropriate for undergraduate students taking their first methods courses, and graduate students who may not remember what they learned in their undergraduate methods courses. For instructors teaching graduate students, this book will serve as a brief primer that can be expanded upon using other assigned readings and resources for more in-depth learning and application to original research projects.
