Studying Interpersonal Interaction

Studying Interpersonal Interaction

This volume presents a comprehensive, critical examination of current research methods used to study human social behavior as it occurs in interpersonal settings such as families, acquaintanceships, friendships, and romantic partnerships. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book's chapters are written by leading figures in communication, social psychology, sociology, and family studies who explore the methodological choices a researcher must make in order to study interpersonal interaction. To permit clear comparison, all chapters in this volume reference the same, common research problem to develop examples, illustrate controversial issues, and describe the potential of the particular method under discussion. Written in an accessible style, chapters openly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method, consider underlying philosophy and assumptions, and note limitations as well as advantages. The result is an originally crafted work that offers readers a unique way to learn about, compare, and ultimately judge the many methods presently available to the researcher or student of interpersonal interaction. Part I considers the assumptions researchers must make about the nature of a social interaction in order to study it. Chapters address issues related to formulating research problems, choosing a research paradigm, determining a viewpoint (participant, peer, or observer) from which to gather data, deciding on appropriate levels and units of analysis, incorporating time, and assessing the mutual adaptation that characterizes interpersonal communication. Part II focuses on procedures for gathering data. These include using accounts and narratives, logs and diaries, retrospective self reports, discourse records, direct observation, and experimentation. Part III highlights new and newly re-discovered methods for analyzing interaction data. Assuming that the reader is familiar with traditional regression and mean-differences approaches, chapters build on this knowledge base to discuss content analysis, tests of sequential association in categorical data, ways of dealing with interdependence in dyadic data, and longitudinal analytic techniques such as time-series analysis, phasic analysis, and meta-analysis. The book concludes with a chapter that both summarizes previous chapters and convincingly argues for methodological pluralism. Encompassing the broad range of central concerns in designing research studies--from conceptualization, through assessment, to data analysis--this book is an ideal reference source for all those engaged in actual research projects. It is also highly valuable for advanced undergraduate and graduate methods courses.

Studying Interpersonal Interaction

Dialectical Approaches to Studying Personal Relationships

This book describes many different and useful ways of understanding personal relationships from a dialectical perspective. It is written for scholars in higher education, both faculty and students, across many fields within the social sciences and the humanities who seek answers to questions about how people relate to one another. The book is valuable for all scholars who pursue new ideas because it models a form of scholarly communication in which: * multiple voices can be acknowledged as valid; * the worth of one perspective is not measured by the denigration of another; and * difference is celebrated as conducive to learning rather than threatening to it. The contributors emphasize the characteristics of their dialectical view that set them apart from other dialectical authors and describe their methods of studying relationships from a dialectical perspective. Following the Bakhtinian perspective, they honor the values of dialogism by respecting different and sometimes contradictory views, assuming that these views can be valid, and joining in a discussion with the editors and other contributors about their emerging work. They also acknowledge that the chapters in this text are part of an ongoing process to frame and reframe emerging ideas, and allow the dialogue that occurs within this frame the freedom to express creative, unique ideas.