Communication Research Asking Questions, Finding Answers

Thank you for picking up this book and reading the preface. I am a communication researcher who conducts and publishes quantitative and qualitative research. I am always learning something new about research methods, and, perhaps, most central to this preface-I really enjoy teaching research methods courses. I designed this research methods book to help students overcome their fear of research methods and to provide instructors with foundational material for their classroom use. Over the previous editions, including this one, I have received a substantial amount of feedback of how the book could be more effective for both instructors and students. Most directly, I receive feedback from my students when I teach undergraduate and graduate research methods courses. More formal feedback has come from the publisher who seeks professional reviews of textbooks before an author begins work on a new edition. Other times, feedback has come informally from conversations at conferences or in e-mails from nstructors or students using the book. I'm grateful for everyone who has taken the time to comment, to point out what's good or bad, and to suggest what they would like to see in a new edition-and what they hope I will remove. So, simply, the goal of this book is to be helpful to instructors in teaching research methods and to be supportive to students who are learning research methods. My other goal is to focus on communication research. I emphasize communication, as all of the examples used in book are drawn from the published research of communication scholars in communication or communication-related journals. I hope you will (and you will encourage your students to) go back to these cited sources