Sunday 16 September 2012
Salsa Dancing into My First Blog Post
I am surprised and delighted by Luker's book so far! I must admit that, initially, I had no idea what to expect from a book called Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences in terms of readability and relevance to my interests. Luker's book is not only very easy to read, it is also thought-provoking and has really opened my eyes to what I can expect from a course entitled "Research Methods". I really like how Luker encourages her readers to keep a research journal of their own, so that reading her book becomes an interactive experience. I found her comments and experiences with both quantitative and qualitative research methods quite informative. I like how she explored the more macro elements of qualitative research and discussed it as more of a "discovery" type of research– this is definitely the kind of research I identify with. I wish I had more specific and intelligent things to say about Luker's book, but at the moment I will just stick with my general feelings on the book so far and say hello to everyone posting on this blog. I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's posts!:)
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Hi Jessica!
ReplyDeleteI agree with much of what you wrote in your post. Coming from a background in philosophy and psychology, I love it when an analogy is well thought out and clearly expressed; and after reading the first few chapters of Luker's Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences, I am curious to see how this central analogy of hers is developed throughout the rest of the book. I, too, find Luker's book to be very easy to read, as well as thought-provoking. I love her characterization of some of the core differences between the old canonical style of social science research and the interdisciplinary approach of contemporary research. It is refreshing to hear a perspective on research methodology that does not advocate a strict division between quantitative and qualitative methods. I remember this dichotomy being developed and imposed upon students throughout my undergraduate research methods courses. Many students at my old university, including myself, were forced to choose to choose one general methodology over the other for our undergraduate psychology thesis. Exploratory research was discouraged, and our studies had to be designed and expressed through operational definitions, hypotheses, and various other concepts and methods that are characteristic of predictive research.