Concepts lie at the core of social science theory and methodology. They provide substance to theories; they form the basis of measurement; they influence the selection of cases. "Social Science Concepts: A Users Guide" explores alternative means of concept construction and their impact on the role of concepts in measurement, case selection, and theories. While there exists a plethora of books on measurement, scaling, and the like, there are virtually no books devoted to the construction and analysis of concepts and their role in the research enterprise. "Social Science Concepts: A Users Guide" provides detailed and practical advice on the construction and use of social science concepts; a Web site provides classroom exercises. It uses a wide range of examples from political science and sociology such as revolution, welfare state, international disputes and war, and democracy to illustrate the theoretical and practical issues of concept construction and use. It explores the means of constructing complex, multilevel, and multidimensional concepts. In particular, it examines the classic necessary and sufficient condition approach to concept building and contrasts it with the family resemblance approach. The consequences of valid concept construction are explored in both qualitative and quantitative analyses. "Social Science Concepts: A Users Guide" will prove an indispensable guide for graduate students and scholars in the social sciences. More broadly, it will appeal to scholars in any field who wish to think more carefully about the concepts used to create theories and research designs. For Course Use: "Social Science Concepts: A Users Guide" has been written with classroom use in mind. Many of the chapters have been successfully taught at the Annual Training Institute on Qualitative Research Methods which is sponsored by the Consortium on Qualitative Research Methods. Feedback from those experiences has been incorporated into the text. Each chapter provides useful, practical, and detailed advice on how to construct, evaluate, and use concepts. To make the volume more useful, an extensive set of classroom exercises is available. These include questions about prominent published work on concepts, measures, and case selection; in addition there are logic exercises and questions regarding large-N applications.

Case Study Research: Principles and Practices aims to provide a general understanding of the case study method as well as specific tools for its successful implementation. These tools can be utilized in all fields where the case study method is prominent, including business, anthropology, communications, economics, education, medicine, political science, social work, and sociology. Topics include the definition of a 'case study,' the strengths and weaknesses of this distinctive method, strategies for choosing cases, an experimental template for understanding research design, and the role of singular observations in case study research. It is argued that a diversity of approaches - experimental, observational, qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic - may be successfully integrated into case study research. This book breaks down traditional boundaries between qualitative and quantitative, experimental and nonexperimental, positivist and interpretivist.

rocess-tracing in social science is a method for studying causal mechanisms linking causes with outcomes. This enables the researcher to make strong inferences about how a cause (or set of causes) contributes to producing an outcome. Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen introduce a refined definition of process-tracing, differentiating it into three distinct variants and explaining the applications and limitations of each. The authors develop the underlying logic of process-tracing, including how one should understand causal mechanisms and how Bayesian logic enables strong within-case inferences. They provide instructions for identifying the variant of process-tracing most appropriate for the research question at hand and a set of guidelines for each stage of the research process.

• 教科书 本书是一本内容全面而详实的政治学研究方法入门教科书，为学生提供了政治学研究的基础指导。 • 双并重 作者在组织材料时，坚持定性与定量方法并重、理论与实践并重，对研究方法的介绍并不停留在抽象的概念上，而是辅以应用的实例，向读者展示具体操作的步骤。借助互联网丰富的资源，构建起了立体的教学体系。 • 新知识 本书对最近一、二十年来在政治学领域异军突起的批判理论和诠释理论做了较为详细的介绍，而这些内容是传统方法论教科书中不多见的。