The basics of communication research / Leslie A. Baxter, Earl Babbie.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction to scientific inquiry about communication: Human inquiry and scientific inquiry about communication; Basic building blocks in conducting communication research; Paradigms of knowing in communication research; Logic systems and theory in communication research; Ethics of communication research -- Quantitative communication research: Conceptualization and operationalization; Logic of sampling; Survey research; Experiments; Quantitative text analysis; Basics of quantitative data analysis; Inferential statistics in quantitative data analysis -- Qualitative communication research: Participant observation; Qualitative interviewing; Social text analysis; Qualitative data analysis -- Appendixes: Communication-related journals; Using the library; Research in cyberspace; Sample research report/proposa; om APA style; APA citations; Estimated sampling error; Random numbers; Constructing indexes and scales; Distribution of Chi square; Distribution of t; Percentage points of the F-distribution; Values of the correlation coefficient for different levels of significance -- Glossary.

[This] text guides you step by step through the logic and skills necessary to do communication research effectively. [It] offers in-depth treatment of the role of reasoning in the research enterprise and the importance of the reasoning process as you progress through the planning and writing of your research proposals and reports.-Back cover.