Focusing on the economic, developmental, political and cultural issues of its member states, this book offers a critical assessment of the ASEM process since its inception in 1996, which now brings together all 27 EU members, the European Commission, and 16 East Asian states. The underlying theme of the book is that the Asia-Europe Meeting should be analyzed as an instance of international dialogue -- in this case, dialogue between two groups of states from two different regions - rather than as a manifestation of two regions acting jointly to perform specific functions at an 'interregional' level. The conclusion is that with the exception of the discussion on the fight against international terrorism and the cultural dialogue, the Asia-Europe dialogue rarely meets the ideal conditions for international dialogue. The way forward proposed by the book in the conclusion involves a new approach combining the European practices of multilevel governance, variable geometry and several speeds.
Using a unique and an innovative theoretical framework synthesizing the work of Tzvetan Todorov and Jurgen Habermas, and supported by extensive empirical research, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian and European politics, as well as comparative politics, international relations and EU-Asia relations.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Section I: Foundations
Chapter One: What is research?
Chapter Two: Defining and describing variables
Chapter Three: Designing sound research--variable roles, threats to validity, and research design
Chapter Four: How are research questions formed and what are the parts of well-written research reports?
Chapter Five: What is logical about statistical logic and what purposes does it serve?
Section II: Analyzing Differences Between Two Sets of Data
Chapter Six: The parametric t-test statistics
Chapter Seven: The non-parametric Mann-Whitney U Test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test statistics
Section III: Analyzing Differences Among more than Two Sets of Data
Chapter Eight: Introduction to the parametric between-group analysis of variance statistic (ANOVA)
Chapter Nine: The non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis and Friedman's Test statistics
Section IV: Analyzing Patterns within a Variable and Between Two Variables
Chapter Ten: The parametric Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient statistic
Chapter Eleven: The non-parametric Spearman’s Rho and Kendall's Tau statistics
Chapter Twelve: The non-parametric Chi-Squared statistics
References
About the Author :
Jean L. Turner is Professor, TESOL/TFL Program, Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA.
Review :
"The clear and systematic writing style and many concrete examples from language education research make this book an excellent entry point to quantitative research for even those who might be afraid of statistics. Its coverage of non-parametric statistics is particularly useful."
Ari Huhta, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
"This book helps readers to understand basic statistical logics and principles, and to analyze and interpret their data using, the freeware statistical program R, available online. It is suitable for language teachers who may not be satisfied with statistical resources that have many intimidating numbers and formulas but without relevant language learning and teaching contexts"
Sun-Young Shin, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
The strength of Turner’s book is that it never loses sight of the target audience: language teachers or novice researchers who want to conduct research in their individual contexts with nonrandom and small or unequal samples sizes, which are likely to require the application of nonparametric statistical procedures. In addition, those without access to expensive software like SPSS or with limited knowledge of how to get started using the free software R will find this book an invaluable addition to their personal library."
Aaron C. Sponseller, JALT Journal
