There are two required texts for this class and four recommended texts. All six can be purchased at the Co-op. As many of the readings as possible will be on reserve at PCL; these readings, naturally, should be supplemented as a student’s interests dictate by material in print and online.

The REQUIRED texts are:

Creswell, John W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Katzer, Jeffrey, Cook, Kenneth H., & Crouch, Wayne W. (1998). Evaluating information: A guide for users of social science research (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

The RECOMMENDED texts are:

Babbie, Earl. (2007). The practice of social research (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Neuman, W. Lawrence. (2007). Basics of social research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Spatz, Chris. (2008). Basic statistics: Tales of distributions (9th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Trochim William K., & Donnelly, James P. (2007). The research methods knowledge base (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson. See http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/

If you buy any of these books, be certain to buy only the 2nd edition of Creswell (2003); the 4th edition of Katzer, Cook, and Crouch (1998); the 2nd edition of Neuman (2007); the 9th edition of Spatz (2008); and the 11th edition of Babbie (2007). Copies of as many of these materials as possible are on two-hour reserve at PCL. Students should be aware of their classmates' needs to see the reserve material.

Several instructors at the School of Information and others elsewhere at UT have used:

Bartz, Albert E. (1988). Basic statistical concepts (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Appendix 2, "Basic Mathematics Refresher," pp. 395-427, is especially useful for those who would like some review of various mathematical concepts and techniques. Other parts of the book are valuable as well.

Busha, Charles H., & Harter, Stephen P. (1980). Research methods in librarianship: Techniques and interpretation. New York: Academic Press. It, too, is a useful book in parts.

Vaughn, Liwen. (2001). Statistical methods for the information professional: A practically painless approach to understanding, using, and interpreting statistics. Medford, NJ: Information Today.

None of these three books must be bought, and all three will be on reserve at PCL.

Other tools

• Three of the recommended textbooks (Babbie, Spatz, and Trochim & Donnelly) have substantial electronic supplements:
  • - Babbie (2007) includes a CD-ROM inside the text with substantial supporting materials, including links to the Web.
  • - Spatz (2008) is complemented by material at the publisher’s Web site. You will want to look especially at the kinds of “workshops” there: (1) Research Methods Workshops (http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/workshops/resch_wrk.html) and (2) Statistics Workshops (http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/workshops/stats_wrk.html), as we progress through the semester.
  • - Trochim & Donnelly (2007) appears entirely online and is supplemented by a lot of valuable material on the Web.
  Please remember that some of the terms, definitions, procedures, and epistemological assumptions discussed in the class, in the textbooks, and elsewhere are contentious. You will find some important differences between the instructor’s conventions and those of any particular source, as you will among the sources themselves. Learning to navigate this sea of uncertainty, but still adhere to rigorous standards for doing and reading research, should be one of your aims in the course.
• You should purchase or borrow a reasonably priced electronic calculator (less than $25.00) with appropriate arithmetic functions, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, and taking a square root. A machine with memory, trigonometric, or statistical functions is valuable but not required.
• Several 30-minute videotapes from the series Against All Odds: Inside Statistics are on reserve in Flawn Academic Center (FAC) 341. The tapes with asterisked numbers below may have particular value for you:

  *  2	Picturing Distributions
  4	Normal Distributions
  11	The Question of Causation
  * 14	Samples and Surveys
  * 19	Confidence Intervals
  20	Significance Tests.

  See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/ChanceLecture/Against.All.Odds.htm for a time and subject index for the entire video series.
• You will also have at your disposal online tutorials, online notes and tapes, and (optional) review sessions to help prepare assignments and prepare for the final exam. See the class schedule online for the locations of the Web-based review material – http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~lis397pd/tutorials.html – and use them as you see fit for individual and group study.