In the Social Research Methods, Neuman assumes that the reader is new to research and explains the topic in a simple language with lots of examples. When I took the IS:360 class last year, I was exposed to a great amount of information about research and I had difficulty visualizing how pieces fit together. Therefore, I read the IS:360 material one more time in the summer to understand the fundamentals of research. From my point of view, Neuman’s book feels like Robson round three and everything makes much more sense now. The following paragraphs briefly discuss my observations in chapters two and three.

In the second chapter, Neuman talk about several dimensions of research such as audience, purpose, time, and data collection techniques. Furthermore, Neuman indicates that “before a researcher begins a study, he or she must decide on a specific type of research” (p.23).Based on my understanding from IS:360, even before this step, a researcher must have a solid understanding of what successful and unsuccessful research results from. In this chapter, the difference between the basic and applied research reminded me the approaches to problem solving that varied from science only client dominated quest discussed by Robson. An interesting sentence in basic research is “basic researchers painstakingly seek answers to questions that could have an impact on thinking for over a century” (p.24) because this sentence means that it is possible to classify a new idea as kuhn paradigm in basic research.

The third chapter defines the meaning of theory. Ideology is a new term to me and it reminded me some aspects of relativist approach. For instance, two characteristics of ideology are avoiding tests, discrepant findings and locked into specific moral beliefs. In relativist approach Robson indicates that “there are different approaches of looking at the world. These should be simply described rather than seeking their truth  and moral values, conventions play an important role in choosing theoretical frameworks or explanations” (p. 22). Finally, this chapter gives a good sense about concepts similar to Reynolds. In conclusion, I am looking forward to read research articles that use the theoretical concepts discussed in this book and take a more active role in the class discussions compared to IS:360.