Understanding Survey Methodology: Sociological Theory and Applications

( Springer, 2020)

By Philip S. Brenner

This volume ambitiously applies sociological theory to create an understanding of aspects of survey methodology. It focuses on the interplay between sociology and survey methodology: what sociological theory and approaches can offer to survey research and vice versa. The volume starts with a focus on direct connections between sociological theories and their applications in survey research. It further presents cutting-edge, original research that applies the “sociological imagination” to substantive concerns important to sociologists, survey methodologists, and social scientists and includes issues such as health, immigration, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and criminal justice.

Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, 2nd Edition

(Sage Publications, 2013)

By Sharlene Hesse-Biber

The fully revised and updated Second Edition of Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, draws on the expertise of a stellar group of interdisciplinary scholars who cover cutting-edge research methods and explore research questions related to the complex and diverse issues that deeply impact women’s lives. This text offers a unique hands-on approach to research by featuring engaging and relevant exercises as well as behind-the-scenes glimpses of feminist researchers at work. The in-depth examples cover the range of research questions that feminists engage with, including issues of gender inequality, violence against women, body image issues, and the discrimination of other marginalized groups. Written in a clear, concise manner that invites students to explore and practice a wide range of research, the Second Edition offers seven new chapters that reflect the latest scholarship in the field, a stronger focus on ethics, new examples that bring concepts to life, effective learning tools, and more.

Feminist Approaches To Theory And Methodology

(Oxford University Press, 1999)
Edited by Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Christina Gilmartin, Robin Lydenberg 

Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology addresses the theoretical issues raised by doing feminist research from an interdisciplinary perspective. Bringing together the work of leading scholars and emerging new critics, the editors have selected the best, most representative and recent work in feminist scholarship.

The collection is organized around key issues in feminist theory and empirical research as impacted by post-structuralist dialogue. Several essays address the tensions between disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge building, exposing male biases embedded in disciplinary paradigms. Other essays deal with dramatic changes in two foundational concepts in feminist theory—identity and experience—which are presented not as innate and unproblematic, but as constituted by discourse, representation, and the effects of power. Additional essays examine the complex terrain in which differences within and between women are used as tools of oppression and of resistance both inside and outside feminist praxis. These essays uncover a subtext of racial anxiety, offering critical insights for academic and social change.

The gender dynamics of power and resistance are taken up by several critics whose research encourages the development of a feminist scholarly methodology that focuses on women's subjective experiences, the ways in which they mediate relations of power, and their capacity for implementing personal and collective activism. These essays deal with the importance in feminist scholarship of resisting the inclination to view women as passive and powerless victims. Another major focus of the volume brings together visual and discursive representations of the female body in which heterosexuality and reproduction are imposed as the norm.

The volume concludes with a set of essays which presents students with some methodological and political dilemmas feminists encounter as they expose the underlying ideological distortions in existing social policies. Distinct for its interdisciplinary scope as well as its global orientation, Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology is an ideal text for courses in a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines including research methods and women's studies.