Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework

This book offers a one-volume introduction to social science methodology, relevant to the disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. It is written for beginning students, long-time practitioners and methodologists, and applies to work conducted in qualitative and quantitative styles. It synthesizes the vast and diverse field of methodology in a way that is clear, concise, and comprehensive. While offering a handy overview of the subject, the book is also an argument about how we should conceptualize methodological problems. Tasks and criteria, the author argues - not fixed rules of procedure - best describe the search for methodological adequacy. Thinking about methodology through this lens provides a new framework for understanding work in the social sciences.

Table of Contents:
Preface; 1. The problem of unity amidst diversity; 2. A criterial framework; Part I. Concepts: 3. Concepts: general criteria; 4. The process of forming concepts; Part II. Propositions: 5. Empirical propositions: general criteria; 6. Description and prediction; 7. Causation; Part III. Causal Investigation: 8. Verification; 9. Case selection; 10. Methods; 11. General strategy; Postscript: justifications; Bibliography.

About the Author :
John Gerring (PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1993) is Professor of Political Science at Boston University, where he teaches courses on methodology and comparative politics. His books include Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2007), A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Concepts and Method: Giovanni Sartori and His Legacy (Routledge, 2009), Social Science Methodology: Tasks, Strategies, and Criteria (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Global Justice: A Prioritarian Manifesto (in process), and Democracy and Development: A Historical Perspective (in process). He served as a fellow of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), as a member of The National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Evaluation of USAID Programs to Support the Development of Democracy, as President of the American Political Science Association's Organized Section on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, and is the current recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation to collect historical data related to colonialism and long-term development.

Review :
"Gerring succeeds and has produced a useful volume, with a few nuggets that desreve to be widely taught and attended to." Contemporary Psychology APA Review of Books