本书共分四篇，**篇是方法论和研究伦理。第二篇是研究设计，第三篇是资料的主要方法，第四篇是分析资料和研究报告。本书是针对Ear Babbie的《社会研究方法》而编的。作一种选择，《读本》为我们提供了理解和应用社会研究方法的一些基本文献，尤其适合初学社会研究方法的读者阅读。

General Introduction
PART Ⅰ AN INTRODUCTION TO INQUIRY
Chapter 1:Why Do You Need to Understand Research Methods?
1.From the Cociological Imagination
2.The Reality of Everyday Life
Chapter 2:Combining theory with Research Questions
3.Delinquency of Chinese-Canandian Youth:A Test of Opportunity ,cotrol,and Intergeneration Confilict Theories
4.School Tracking and Student Violence
5.Murder followed by Suicide in Australia ,1973-1992:A Research Note
Chapter 3:Ethics
6.Nuremberg and the Issue of Wartime Experiments on U.S.Prisoners:the Green committee
7.Problerms of Ethics in Reasearch
8.The ehtics of sonducting Social-Science Research on the Internet
PART Ⅱ THE STRUCTURING OF INQUIRY
Chapter 4:Research Design
9.Public Assistance Receipt Among Immigrants and Natives:How the Unit of Analysis Affects Research Findings
10.consequences of Participating in a Longitudinal Study of Marriage
Chapter 5:Conceptualization and Operationalization
11.Conceptualization of Terrorism
12.A Systematic qualitative Evaluation of Levels of Differentiation in Famillies with children at Risk
13.Scale for Assessing Emotional disturbance :Long-Term Test-Retest Reliabillity and convergent Vallidity with Kingdergarten and first-Grade Students
Chapter 6:Indexes and Scales
14.Environmental Waste:Recycling Attitudes and Correlates
15.The Reverse Social Distance Scale
16.Bials Towards Gay Patiets by Psychoanalytic clinicians:An Empirical Investigation
Chapter 7:Sampling
PART Ⅲ MODES OF OBSERVATIONS
PART Ⅳ ANALYZING DATA
Glossary
Index