What should you do when results don't match your expectations? How is it possible to make the best of existing evidence? Is it acceptable to adapt your research question in the middle of a project? This book examines how experienced researchers have tackled these questions in their own projects. Moving beyond abstract discussions of method, it explores how social scientists collect and construct evidence in real-life practice.

Looking critically at nine examples of recent research, Doing Social Science gives a thorough yet accessible examination of how research is planned, carried out, recorded and analysed in real-life situations. The book covers core and new areas of social science, with each chapter looking at a different contemporary study that taps into a key aspect of modern everyday life. Diverse and globally relevant, these studies include themes from online gaming and news interviews to post-colonial life and Goth subculture. The book relates the theory behind such social issues to the methods being used, as it gives critical evaluation alongside careful explanation and invaluable advice. Showing how the choice and use of particular methods and techniques can critically shape the findings of social science research, the authors also explain how to deal with complex research issues.

Written and edited by experts in the field, this innovative book highlights the excitement as well as the challenge of conducting real-life research. After reading this, students throughout the social sciences will have the confidence and skills to evaluate the research of others and carry out their own research projects.

"I think it is very helpful in demonstrating to students how methodological issues have an impact on practical research projects, using examples that are accessible and entertaining... [I]t will be an excellent text for students to 'dip into' to help them to see that the methods we discuss are used and provide important findings. In addition, I think there are several specific examples that we can refer to in lectures." - Jamie Harding, Senior Lecturer in Research Methods, Northumbria University, UK. "The coverage of the volume is impressive, both in terms of topic, discipline and, importantly, method. What one takes from this volume as a whole is an understanding of the messy complexities of 'real' research, often absent from the 'how-to' textbooks; an appreciation that the field of research methods is a developing, dynamic and changing one; and that increasingly empirical projects are drawing on a range of methods and approaches, used in combination, to do justice to research topics and questions." - Amanda Coffey, Cardiff University in the British Journal of Sociology of Education

FIONA DEVINE is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester, UK.

SUE HEATH is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, UK, and Co-director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.