Titel:

Method 101 is a modern teaching media in social scientific method and method development. Primarily, it should be perceived as an instrument of teaching on an introductory College and University level within law, sociology, political science, journalism and other liberal arts.
Method 101 illuminates several quantitative and qualitative studies from database analysis to surveys, research spheres to journalistic methods and examining these in terms of established classical methodology and newly innovated methods.

The cover picture is from an old copperplate from 15 century. It’s a seminar at Bologna University, the oldest in the world. If you look carefully you can see their books is replaced with computers. That’s what Method 101 is all about, old and new mixed up. The problem on how to estimate a sample and other classical problems is e.g. carefully explained, but it also concentrates on e.g. the film and mass media's influence on the social sciences. Internet and how to work with databases have it’s own chapter.

The book's subtitle is "A book about social scientific method and method development". This means that its view of social scientific method is dynamic. Methods are developed, disappear and old ones return. As we have learnt to speak of theory development, we must also learn to speak of method development. Ever heard of "research circles"? That’s only one of new innovations in research methods that is taken up.

The recurring themes throughout the book are that data is related to perspectives, that methodological creativity is attainable and desirable, as well as methods must be subordinate to the problem and not the other way round.

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Conny Svenning is an Associate Professor teaching at the Department of Sociology at University of Lund, Sweden