Description
Book SynopsisThis book offers advice to doctoral researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students on how to embark on their research. Based on a decade of teaching early-stage researchers in the social sciences at the LSE and other universities, and written with the central problems of beginning researchers in mind, Bob Hancké guides them through the process of thinking about the links between theory, cases and data, and to do so in a way that helps to turn their initial plausible ideas into convincing arguments. This lively book, deliberately jargon-free and with a hands-on, pragmatic approach to research design, addresses the problems that research students face - or ignore, often at their peril - in the course of their first few years. Its central message is that research is a complex and iterative process in which researchers construct every relevant part of their project with one goal in mind: make a persuasive point. They define the question they ask and the debate they engage, co
Trade ReviewThis is an excellent book. It should be useful for both graduate students and their supervisors (especially those making their first steps in supervising PhD students). The book offers a systematic and reflective guide to empirical research in the social sciences. It can also benefit researchers in other disciplines, such as law * Oren Perez, Political Studies Review *
Table of ContentsAPPENDIX: PARTICIPATING IN THE PROFESSION
