Researching social problems/ Amir Marvasti and A.Javier Trevino eds.

Includes bibliography and index

Introduction -- Survey research: asking questions for assessing social problems -- Research interviews: measuring feeling and constructing social problems -- Narrative inquiry: stories and storytellers of social problems -- Institutional ethnography: a mode of inquiry and a strategy for change -- Participatory action research: re-imagining the study and transformation of social problems -- Autoethnography as a methodology in researching social problems -- Considering materiality: the utility of Actor-Network theory to study social problems -- Systematic experimentation on social problems -- Visual research methods: integrating images in the study of social problems -- The ethics of the study of social problems

This book covers a wide range of contemporary methods for researching social problems and connects these approaches to the broader substance and theories of social problems. Expository and discursive in approach, chapters follow a uniform structure, with each offering research examples and a broad description of the related method and its theoretical context, together with a "how-to" guide for applying that method using substantive examples from the field of social problems. For every method explored, there is a research example that fully reviews and illustrates the application of the particular method, before giving a full assessment of the method’s strengths and weaknesses and latest developments. With chapters exploring survey interviews, in-depth interviews, narrative inquiry, institutional ethnography, participatory action research, auto-ethnography, Actor-Network Theory, experimental research, visual research methods, and research ethics, Researching Social Problems will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and politics working in the fields of research methods and social problems.