Routledge

This chapter presents a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of communication and its effects through the diffusion of innovation from a communication approach. It demonstrates through the history of diffusion research how diffusion of innovations occurs and how it impacts communication outcomes. Based on rural sociology of the 1930s and 1940s, the impact of communication platforms and an “inside out” approach are introduced as ways to test and evaluate communication change through message and source strategies.

Most writing on sociological method has been concerned with how accurate facts can be obtained and how theory can thereby be more rigorously tested. In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss address the equally Important enterprise of how the discovery of theory from data—systematically obtained and analyzed in social research—can be furthered. The discovery of theory from data—grounded theory—is a major task confronting sociology, for such a theory fits empirical situations, and is understandable to sociologists and laymen alike. Most important, it provides relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications. In Part I of the book, "Generation Theory by Comparative Analysis," the authors present a strategy whereby sociologists can facilitate the discovery of grounded theory, both substantive and formal. This strategy involves the systematic choice and study of several comparison groups. In Part II, The Flexible Use of Data," the generation of theory from qualitative, especially documentary, and quantitative data Is considered. In Part III, "Implications of Grounded Theory," Glaser and Strauss examine the credibility of grounded theory. The Discovery of Grounded Theory is directed toward improving social scientists' capacity for generating theory that will be relevant to their research. While aimed primarily at sociologists, it will be useful to anyone Interested In studying social phenomena—political, educational, economic, industrial— especially If their studies are based on qualitative data.

Statistical Power Analysis is a nontechnical guide to power analysis in research planning that provides users of applied statistics with the tools they need for more effective analysis. The Second Edition includes: * a chapter covering power analysis in set correlation and multivariate methods; * a chapter considering effect size, psychometric reliability, and the efficacy of "qualifying" dependent variables and; * expanded power and sample size tables for multiple regression/correlation.

In computers and other data processing devices, data is usually handled in bytes. Eight parallel lines carry one bit each. However, setting up eight separate transmission channels between a transmitter and a distant receiver is not practicable.

This fully updated sixth edition of the international bestseller Research Methods in Education covers the whole range of methods currently employed by educational research at all stages. It is divided into five main parts: the context of educational research; planning educational research; styles of educational research; strategies for data collection and researching; and data analysis. The book also contains references to a comprehensive dedicated website of accompanying materials. The sixth edition includes new material on: complexity theory, ethics, sampling and sensitive educational research experimental research, questionnaire design and administration with practical guidance qualitative and quantitative data analysis, with practical examples internet based research. Research Methods in Education is essential reading for the professional researcher and continues to be the standard text for students and lecturers in educational research. To access the dedicated website of accompanying materials, please visit: www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415368780.

"Case study research: design and methods." Evaluation & Research in Education, 24(3), pp. 221–222

Abstract This work sets out the author's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, he finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of ‘illocutionary forces’ of utterances, which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophical problems.

The basic opposition between the tastes of luxury and the tastes of necessity is specified in as many oppositions as there are different ways of asserting one&s;s distinction vis-a-vis the working class and its primary needs, or-which amounts to the same thing-different powers whereby necessity can be kept at a distance. The taste for rare, aristocratic foods points to a traditional cuisine, rich in expensive or rare product. The system of differences becomes clearer when one looks more closely at the patterns of spending on food. The quasi-conscious representation of the approved form of the perceived body, and in particular its thinness or fatness, is not the only mediation through which the social definition of appropriate foods is established. The relation to food-the primary need and pleasure-is only one dimension of the bourgeois relation to the social world.

Although structural equation modelling (SEM) is a popular statistical technique for multivariate data analysis in social and behavioural sciences, its use in education has massified more recently. ...

Rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.

This chapter examines the relationship between pleasure and desire, with special attention to the possibility of reducing pleasure to desire, or desire to pleasure. There are plausible arguments for and against both reductive theories. Some of the arguments appeal to the normative roles of pleasure and desire, but there are also empirical findings from affective neuroscience that are relevant to both theories. One lesson from the discussion is that theorists of different backgrounds have different desiderata for a theory of pleasure or desire. These competing interests may ultimately push us toward adopting a plurality of theories, with different theories explaining different kinds of pleasure or desire.

This chapter explores the roles of preference and desire in decision theory. I first outline the foundations of decision theory, and more specifically expected utility theory, as well as the roles of preference and desire in these foundations. I then explore three disagreements over the nature and roles of preference and desire in decision theory. These are disagreements over the metaphysical commitments of decision theorists, the conative structure of our minds, and the traditional understanding of preference in decision theory.

This chapter outlines how a select few seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and Continental European philosophers understood desire and its role in action and choice. I discuss figures who are established members of the Western philosophical canon (Locke and Kant in Sections 5.2 and 5.5 , respectively), as well as somewhat lesser-known figures (Wolff and Hutcheson in Sections 5.3 and 5.4 , respectively) who were profoundly influential even though they are read less often in the present day. Included in each section is a brief discussion of how these four figures influenced the theories of desire developed by subsequent, more minor figures, and I focus there on Modern European female philosophers.

At the heart of economics is a concept that bears a striking resemblance to a desire. Economists use preferences to explain and predict people’s choices. However, what exactly we are talking about when we talk about preferences in the context of economics has been debated in the discipline for well over 150 years. This chapter outlines and critically assesses the dominant views on the nature of preferences in economics. It also offers some reflections on the relevance of the debate about the nature of preferences in economics.