Social science researchers in the global South, and in South Africa particularly, utilise research methods in innovative ways in order to respond to contexts characterised by diversity, racial and political tensions, socioeconomic disparities and gender inequalities. These methods often remain undocumented – a gap that this book starts to address. Written by experts from various methodological fields, Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive collation of original essays and cutting-edge research that demonstrates the variety of novel techniques and research methods available to researchers responding to these context-bound issues. It is particularly relevant for study and research in the fields of applied psychology, sociology, ethnography, biography and anthropology. In addition to their unique combination of conceptual and application issues, the chapters also include discussions on ethical considerations relevant to the method in similar global South contexts. Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences has much to offer to researchers, professionals and others involved in social science research both locally and internationally.
R is a powerful language for statistical computing and graphics that can handle virtually any data-crunching task. It runs on all important platforms and provides thousands of useful specialized modules and utilities. This makes R a great way to get meaningful information from mountains of raw data. R in Action, Second Edition is a language tutorial focused on practical problems. Written by a research methodologist, it takes a direct and modular approach to quickly give readers the information they need to produce useful results. Focusing on realistic data analyses and a comprehensive integration of graphics, it follows the steps that real data analysts use to acquire their data, get it into shape, analyze it, and produce meaningful results that they can provide to clients. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.
A rare and much needed compilation of some thought-provoking papers in the area of qualitative research in marketing, this book is a must have for anyone pursuing the discipline of marketing research, scholars intent on the pursuit of qualitative inquiry as well as practising professionals looking for innovative approaches to research. Global Business Review Belk has compiled an exhaustive collection of contributions from scholars and practitioners throughout North America and Europe. . . . This extremely informative volume spans the full array of qualitative research areas. . . . Highly recommended. S.D. Clark, Choice The Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing offers both basic and advanced treatments intended to serve academics, students, and marketing research professionals. The 42 chapters begin with a history of qualitative methods in marketing by Sidney Levy and continue with detailed discussions of current thought and practice in: research paradigms such as grounded theory and semiotics research contexts such as advertising and brands data collection methods such as projectives and netnography data analysis methods such as metaphoric and visual analyses presentation topics such as videography and reflexivity applications such as ZMET applied to Broadway plays and depth interviews with executives special issues such as multi-sited ethnography and research on sensitive topics. Authors include leading scholars and practitioners from North America and Europe. They draw on a wealth of experience using well-established as well as emerging qualitative research methods. The result is a thorough, timely, and useful Handbook that will educate, inspire, and serve as standard reference for marketing academics and practitioners alike.
This two-volume handbook presents a collection of novel methodologies with applications and illustrative examples in the areas of data-driven computational social sciences. Throughout this handbook, the focus is kept specifically on business and consumer-oriented applications with interesting sections ranging from clustering and network analysis, meta-analytics, memetic algorithms, machine learning, recommender systems methodologies, parallel pattern mining and data mining to specific applications in market segmentation, travel, fashion or entertainment analytics. A must-read for anyone in data-analytics, marketing, behavior modelling and computational social science, interested in the latest applications of new computer science methodologies. The chapters are contributed by leading experts in the associated fields.The chapters cover technical aspects at different levels, some of which are introductory and could be used for teaching. Some chapters aim at building a common understanding of the methodologies and recent application areas including the introduction of new theoretical results in the complexity of core problems. Business and marketing professionals may use the book to familiarize themselves with some important foundations of data science. The work is a good starting point to establish an open dialogue of communication between professionals and researchers from different fields. Together, the two volumes present a number of different new directions in Business and Customer Analytics with an emphasis in personalization of services, the development of new mathematical models and new algorithms, heuristics and metaheuristics applied to the challenging problems in the field. Sections of the book have introductory material to more specific and advanced themes in some of the chapters, allowing the volumes to be used as an advanced textbook. Clustering, Proximity Graphs, Pattern Mining, Frequent Itemset Mining, Feature Engineering, Network and Community Detection, Network-based Recommending Systems and Visualization, are some of the topics in the first volume. Techniques on Memetic Algorithms and their applications to Business Analytics and Data Science are surveyed in the second volume; applications in Team Orienteering, Competitive Facility-location, and Visualization of Products and Consumers are also discussed. The second volume also includes an introduction to Meta-Analytics, and to the application areas of Fashion and Travel Analytics. Overall, the two-volume set helps to describe some fundamentals, acts as a bridge between different disciplines, and presents important results in a rapidly moving field combining powerful optimization techniques allied to new mathematical models critical for personalization of services. Academics and professionals working in the area of business anyalytics, data science, operations research and marketing will find this handbook valuable as a reference. Students studying these fields will find this handbook useful and helpful as a secondary textbook.
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques provides the concepts and techniques in processing gathered data or information, which will be used in various applications. Specifically, it explains data mining and the tools used in discovering knowledge from the collected data. This book is referred as the knowledge discovery from data (KDD). It focuses on the feasibility, usefulness, effectiveness, and scalability of techniques of large data sets. After describing data mining, this edition explains the methods of knowing, preprocessing, processing, and warehousing data. It then presents information about data warehouses, online analytical processing (OLAP), and data cube technology. Then, the methods involved in mining frequent patterns, associations, and correlations for large data sets are described. The book details the methods for data classification and introduces the concepts and methods for data clustering. The remaining chapters discuss the outlier detection and the trends, applications, and research frontiers in data mining. This book is intended for Computer Science students, application developers, business professionals, and researchers who seek information on data mining. - Presents dozens of algorithms and implementation examples, all in pseudo-code and suitable for use in real-world, large-scale data mining projects - Addresses advanced topics such as mining object-relational databases, spatial databases, multimedia databases, time-series databases, text databases, the World Wide Web, and applications in several fields - Provides a comprehensive, practical look at the concepts and techniques you need to get the most out of your data
This book presents an overview of seventeen forms of inquiry used in curriculum research in education. Conventional disciplinary forms of inquiry, such as philosophical, historical, and scientific, are described, as well as more recently acknowledged forms such as ethnographic, aesthetic, narrative, phenomenological, and hermeneutic. Interdisciplinary forms such as theoretical, normative, critical, deliberative, and action research are also included. These forms of inquiry are distinguished from one another in terms of purposes, types of research questions addressed, and the processes and logic of procedure employed in arriving at knowledge claims.
This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. The much-anticipated fifth edition of Designing the User Interface provides a comprehensive, authoritative introduction to the dynamic field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Students and professionals learn practical principles and guidelines needed to develop high quality interface designs—ones that users can understand, predict, and control. It covers theoretical foundations, and design processes such as expert reviews and usability testing. Numerous examples of direct manipulation, menu selection, and form fill-in give readers an understanding of excellence in design The new edition provides updates on current HCI topics with balanced emphasis on mobile devices, Web, and desktop platforms. It addresses the profound changes brought by user-generated content of text, photo, music, and video and the raised expectations for compelling user experiences. Provides a broad survey of designing, implementing, managing, maintaining, training, and refining the user interface of interactive systems. Describes practical techniques and research-supported design guidelines for effective interface designs Covers both professional applications (e.g. CAD/CAM, air traffic control) and consumer examples (e.g. web services, e-government, mobile devices, cell phones, digital cameras, games, MP3 players) Delivers informative introductions to development methodologies, evaluation techniques, and user-interface building tools. Supported by an extensive array of current examples and figures illustrating good design principles and practices. Includes dynamic, full-color presentation throughout. Guides students who might be starting their first HCI design project Accompanied by a Companion Website with additional practice opportunities and informational resources for both students and professors.
Every three years a major international conference on bats draws the leading workers in the field to a carefully orchestrated presentation of the research and advances and current state of understanding of bat biology. Bats are the second most populous group of mammalia species, after rodents, and they are probably the most intensively studied group of mammals. Virtually all mammologists and a large proportion of organismic biologists are interested in bats. The earlier two edited books deriving from previous bat research conferences, as well as this one, have been rigorously edited by Tom Kunz and others, with all chapters subjected to peer review. The resulting volumes, published first by Academic Press and most recently by Smithsonian, have sold widely as the definitive synthetic treatments of current scientific understanding of bats.
This comprehensive edited volume is the first of its kind, designed to serve as a textbook for long-duration business analytics programs. It can also be used as a guide to the field by practitioners. The book has contributions from experts in top universities and industry. The editors have taken extreme care to ensure continuity across the chapters. The material is organized into three parts: A) Tools, B) Models and C) Applications. In Part A, the tools used by business analysts are described in detail. In Part B, these tools are applied to construct models used to solve business problems. Part C contains detailed applications in various functional areas of business and several case studies. Supporting material can be found in the appendices that develop the pre-requisites for the main text. Every chapter has a business orientation. Typically, each chapter begins with the description of business problems that are transformed into data questions; and methodology is developed to solve these questions. Data analysis is conducted using widely used software, the output and results are clearly explained at each stage of development. These are finally transformed into a business solution. The companion website provides examples, data sets and sample code for each chapter.
Introduction to Research Methods: A Hands-On Approach makes learning research methods easy for students by giving them activities they can experience and do on their own. With clear, simple, and even humorous prose, this text offers students a straightforward introduction to an exciting new world of social science and behavioral research. Rather than making research seem intimidating, author Bora Pajo shows students how research can be an easy, ongoing conversation on topics that matter in their lives. Each chapter includes real research examples that illustrate specific topics that the chapter covers, guides that help students explore actual research challenges in more depth, and ethical considerations relating to specific chapter topics. 3 Reasons Why You’ll Want to Read This Book 1. Conducting research can be fun when you see it in terms that relate to your everyday life. 2. Knowing how to do research will open many doors for you in your career. It will open your mind to new ideas on what you might pursue in the future (e.g., becoming an entrepreneur, opening your own nongovernmental organization, or running your own health clinic), and give you an extra analytic skill to brag about in your job interviews. 3. Understanding research will make you an educated consumer. You will be able to evaluate the information before you and determine what to accept and what to reject. Truth be told, understanding research will save you money in the short and long term*. *From Chapter 1 of Introduction to Research Methods: A Hands-On Approach
