RESEARCHING SOCIAL PROBLEMS: With Model Researches

The book Researching Social Problems is very peculiar in nature, as it brings together works of research scholars from divergent fields such as health psychology, clinical or counselling psychology, educational psychology and child psychology. The journey of any good social research begins from the genuine question in the mind of the researcher and under the guidance of supervisor/facilitator travels through various steps in methodology. These various steps and concepts in the journey of research and research methodology have comprehensively been covered in the beginning of this book. The researchers have selected varied social problems and have employed different research methodologies as per the demand of their research problem. There are five research studies related to children, two studies related to women, one related to men, and two studies on contemporary health issues and career decision-making.
The endeavour has been to cover various dimensions; right from understanding the research methodology to statistical analysis and following of systematic steps in research process. This book will also be useful to prospective researchers on selection and application of appropriate research method in the problem area and selection of a suitable statistical method for the data generated. This volume will prove to be a model practical application book for postgraduate students of research methodology and the PhD students intending to start the doctoral research.

Medha Kumthekar is Professor and former Head, Department of Psychology, SNDT Women’s University, Pune. She has a rich experience of thirty years of teaching psychology from junior college to postgraduate level. She has taught clinical and counselling psychology to postgraduate students for over 22 years. Her core interest area is research methodology and statistics. Her depth and insight in the application of various psychological and statistical tests, and interpretation of their results has made her an expert teacher in the field of testing and methodology. As a practising psychologist and counsellor, she has been conducting professional workshops on testing as well as on methodology and using many psychological tests at professional level. She was also invited by NCERT in formation of some psychological tests.