Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology in the Social Sciences)

Praise for Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology in the Social Sciences)

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"This book is aimed to provide social scientists with hand-on tools for defining concepts and formalizing theories. It is particularly addressed to graduate students and it ranges from causal analysis to mathematical modeling, from simulation to grounded and emergent approaches to theory construction. It is well organized, includes many simple and effective examples, and has a very clear setup. At the end of each chapter, the authors provide a summary, concluding comments, and suggested readings. The latter are complemented by a sentence about the content of each referenced literature, which is very helpful to find the respective reference of interest. Above, an index with key terms of each chapter and intuitive exercises to deepen the understanding of it are provided. Doing so, the book is very suitable for didactical purpose, in particular for research courses to graduate students. The effective, easy-to-understand, and straightforward style of writing is noticeable since from the first pages of the book....The book is highly recommendable for social science students, is a good lecture for young and open minded researchers, and locates simulation at the core of the scientific endeavour."
— Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Stimulation