From: "Marshall Feldman" <marsh-AT-uri.edu> Subject: BHA: Research Methods Texts Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 17:31:28 -0400 Hi, I'm teaching a course on research methods and using two textbooks. One, _Social Research Methods_ by Lawrence Neuman is fairly standard although far less dogmatic than most that I've seen. The other, _Explaining Society_ by Danermark, et al. is explicitly based in CR. At one point we covered the logic of research. Neuman discusses inductive and deductive reasoning; Danermark discuses both of these as well as abductive and retroductive reasoning. One of the students asked what I thought was a very good question. Why doesn't Neuman cover these other modes of reasoning as well? I explained that Neuman is updating a text (now in its 5th edition) that originally didn't have to deal with CR and there's a certain path-dependence for the textbook that makes incorporating such concepts now very difficult. In effect, the entire text would have to be reorganized. I'm not entirely satisfied with this answer. Why do you think this stuff hasn't become more common in methods textbooks? Do you know of any that do a better job with this? Marsh Feldman --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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