This book provides balanced coverage of quantitative and qualitative methods of social research with a unique "behind the scenes" approach: Chapters are built on focal research pieces and excerpts from real research projects, and they present the insights and perspectives of workers conducting real-world research.

Building Relationships and Communicating with Young Children: A Practical Guide for Social Workers

Published: 2010

Pages: 177

This book provides a timely, invaluable resource and practical guide for social work students specialising in family and child care and for practitioners who have young children on their caseloads. Packed with real life examples of in-depth interviews conducted with young children known to social services, it outlines what can be done to improve practice in this challenging and demanding area.

Children may be witnesses to crimes or accidents, or suspected victims of abuse or neglect, or they may be involved in some form of legal action such as custody cases. In these situations, they may need to be interviewed formally, and if this is not done properly, incorrect or inadequate information may be recorded or the child's position may not be correctly represented later in court. In cases of child abuse, the child may not be the only witness, and the quality of their verbal evidence is critical.This is a practical guide the evidential interviewing techniques needed by a range of professionals: social workers, forensic psychologists, lawyers, police and teachers.

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing ChinaChang, a former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, explores the urban realities and rural roots of a community, until now, as unacknowledged as it is massive—China's 130 million workers whose exodus from villages to factory and city life is the largest migration in history. Chang spent three years following the successes, hardships and heartbreaks of two teenage girls, Min and Chunming, migrants working the assembly lines in Dongguan, one of the new factory cities that have sprung up all over China.

Black Pepper: Piper nigrum (Medicinal and Aromatic Plants - Industrial Profiles)

Black Pepper is the first monograph on this important and most widely used spice. This volume includes chapters on all aspects of the crops' botany; crop improvement, agronomy, chemistry, post-harvest technology, processing, diseases, insect pests, marketing, economy and uses. All the available information has been collected and presented by experts for the use of students, teachers and research workers in the field, and will remain the major reference source for all pepper workers for some time to come.