"'An excellent guidebook through different approaches to social science measurement, including the all-important route-maps that show us how to get there' - Roger Jowell, City University. 'Over the last decade at least there has been an avalanche of social research methods books, almost all of which are concerned to unproblematically purvey methodological material to ever more particular market niches, often using purportedly new repackagings What is needed, instead, is the deepening of methodological knowledge and the widening of reflective discussions around social research. In this wide-ranging collection of chapters, written by acknowledged experts in their fields, Outhwaite and Turner have brought together material in one volume which will provide an extremely important platform for consideration of the full range of contemporary analytical and methodological issues' - Charles Crothers, Auckland University of Technology. This is a jewel among methods Handbooks, bringing together a formidable collection of international contributors to comment on every aspect of the various central issues, complications and controversies in the core methodological traditions. It is designed to meet the needs of those disciplinary and nondisciplinary problem-oriented social inquirers for a comprehensive overview of the methodological literature. The text is divided into 7 sections: - Overviews of methodological approaches in the social sciences; - Cases, comparisons and theory; - Quantification and experiment; - Rationality, complexity and collectivity; - Interpretation, critique and postmodernity; - Discourse construction; and - Engagement. Edited by two leading figures in the field, the Handbook is a landmark work in the field of research methods. More than just a `cookbook' that teaches readers how to master techniques, it will give social scientists in all disciplines an appreciation for the full range of methodological debates today, from the quantitative to the qualitative, giving them deeper and sharpen insights into their own research questions. It will generate debate, solutions and a series of questions for researchers to exploit and develop in their research and teaching."