Summary
Contents
Subject index
Advancing Family Theories explores two contemporary theories of the family - rational choice theory and transition theory. These diametrically different approaches illuminate what differing theories reveal about families. The book also discusses how meta-theories can assist in building and refining theory and offers insight on the "understanding versus explanation" debate. Advancing Family Theories gives students a precise notion of what a theory is and how theories work in research. The book not only looks at philosophical realms but also examines particular substantive theory to explain and predict family behaviors.Advancing Family Theories Family Theories, Second Edition (SAGE, 2002), or is effective on its own. The book helps students with the task of taking abstract and very general theories and reducing them to a level of specific research models and hypotheses.
Theory and Human Values
Theory and Human Values
Contextualism and relativism in theory, as found in many postmodern statements, is often though not exclusively associated with the call for researchers to put their values into science (Allen, 2000; White & Marshall, 2001). For many of us, this cry to put values back into our science and research raises thorny problems—such as whose values, and the issue of bias and credibility (Harding, 1991). The problem is not that science was ever value free, a claim even Weber (1949) dismissed, but that the values now being advocated would take us further from the production of knowledge rather than closer. I think real progress is only achieved when scholars research what they find interesting or fun or of value. ...
- Loading...
