Bryman: Social Research Methods: 3e
Chapter 06
http://www.chssc.salford.ac.uk/healthSci/resmeth2000/resmeth/chap2.htm
Dr Peter Eachus, of the School of Community, Health Sciences and Social Care, at the University of Salford, has grouped a number of closely related topics in social science research on his school’s website. This link brings you to the chapter on quantitative methods, itself very comprehensive. It is also very easy to read, uncluttered with jargon or arcane terminology, making it a great resource in this area.
http://www.ifad.org/gender/tools/hfs/hfspub/
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an agency of the United Nations, which has the goal of “empowering poor rural women and men in developing countries” to achieve higher incomes and improved food security. This link brings you to the home-page of one of their publications, concerning concepts, indicators and measurements for research on food security. The entire publication can be downloaded, or just the pieces that are more relevant to chapter 6.
http://www.rogerwimmer.com/wrvalidity.htm
Roger Wimmer PhD., answered questions about research on a website for a number of years and, later, categorised his responses. This link discusses research validity, a key concept in quantitative research. At the foot of this web page, you will find a link to Dr Wimmer’s own sites, well worth visiting. You could navigate to his “V” questions and read actual questions and his answers on validity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_(psychometric)
This useful online encyclopedia (Wikipedia) provides a very helpful definition of reliability that might help you to understand this concept better. It explains clearly what reliability means in psychometric terms and shows some of the tests that are commonly used to measure reliability, such as the test-retest method. Wikipedia is a sort of “people’s” encyclopedia, put together by volunteers. Consequently, you should check out author attributions and references, which might bring you closer to the original sources.
http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/100/correlation_or_causation.htm
Dr Mueller is the Professor of Psychology at North Central College, Naperville, Illinois. This is one of the websites he created, in order to share his teaching resources. What we see here are a series of newspaper headlines on research reports. The headlines imply causality but the research reports mostly indicate correlation. Test yourself on the headlines and see how strong your ability to think logically is.


