Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book overviews the data sources for that area of social science with the names of the most important government and private-sector data sources, which statistics they publish, and in many cases an illustrative data sample. It also describes the social scientists work that within their own narrow specialty at considerable cost. Most projects use data from outside a narrow discipline, and the data may have limitations that are unknown to the researcher. Similarly, geographic units such as Metropolitan Statistical Areas and corrections of price data for inflation are common throughout social science research. The book assists researchers in assessing the problems of the underlying data. Without such knowledge, many social science projects will fail, as in the case of military spending research, or worse, projects will proceed without sufficient caution as to the data's limitations.