Wendy Olsen

This textbook provides clear and accessible guidance on the importance and practical application of mixed-methods research. Professor Olsen presents a range of multiple mixed-methods techniques using quantified data. Critical realism underpins key arguments. She offers detailed examples based on wide experience with international applied social-science projects. The book shows readers how to join quantitative and qualitative data together. Detailed methods include: using multiple-level data; constructing new indices based on mixing survey responses and personal interviews; and using focus groups alongside a large survey. The book provides readers with linkages of data between different software packages. It explains the analysis stage in mixed-methods research, interprets complex causality, shows how to transform data, and helps with interpreting social structures, institutions, and discourses. Finally, the book covers some epistemological issues. These include the nature and value of data. The author discusses validity and techniques for ensuring relevant, innovative conclusions. The book also touches on action research as an overarching participatory method. This book is based on clear and explicit definitions, is accessible to students and researchers across disciplines, and shows the appeal of mixed-methods research to those trained in quantitative methods.

This innovative book provides students and researchers alike with an indispensible introduction to the key theoretical issues and practical methods needed for data collection. It uses clear definitions, relevant interdisciplinary examples from around the world and up-to-date suggestions for further reading to demonstrate how to usefully gather and use qualitative, quantitative, and mixed data sets. The book is divided into seven critical parts: • Data Collection: An Introduction to Research Practices • Collecting Qualitative Data • Observation and Informed Methods • Experimental and Systematic Data Collection • Survey Methods for Data Collection • The Case Study Method of Data Collection • Concluding Suggestions for Data Collection Groups A stimulating, practical guide which can be read as individual concepts or as a whole this will be an important resource for students and research professionals. Wendy Olsen is Senior Lecturer at Manchester University, Institute for Development Policy & Management and Cathie Marsh Centre for Census & Survey Research

This innovative book provides students and researchers alike with an indispensible introduction to the key theoretical issues and practical methods needed for data collection. It uses clear definitions, relevant interdisciplinary examples from around the world and up-to-date suggestions for further reading to demonstrate how to usefully gather and use qualitative, quantitative, and mixed data sets. The book is divided into seven critical parts: • Data Collection: An Introduction to Research Practices • Collecting Qualitative Data • Observation and Informed Methods • Experimental and Systematic Data Collection • Survey Methods for Data Collection • The Case Study Method of Data Collection • Concluding Suggestions for Data Collection Groups A stimulating, practical guide which can be read as individual concepts or as a whole this will be an important resource for students and research professionals. Wendy Olsen is Senior Lecturer at Manchester University, Institute for Development Policy & Management and Cathie Marsh Centre for Census & Survey Research

Classical and radical economists have marginalised the role of money, most particularly the role of credit, in driving the machinery of accumulation and exclusion. Although critiques of capitalism from Marxist, feminist and ecological perspectives abound, The Politics of Money is unique in gathering the strengths of these differing critiques into a coherent whole. The book reviews the role of money in current society through an overview of the history of money creation and a critique of the main theoretical developments in economic thought. Alternative perspectives on money are then presented through a review of a number of radical perspectives but focusing mainly on the work of Marx, Veblen and the social credit perspective of Douglas and the guild socialists. The authors have drawn upon their varied expertise in economics and the social sciences to produce the foundations of a new political economy that will enable communities to reconstruct their socio-economic fabric through social and political control of money systems.