Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Military Studies

This volume offers an overview of the methodologies of research in the field of military studies.

As an institution relying on individuals and resources provided by society, the military has been studied by scholars from a wide range of disciplines: political science, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, economics and administrative studies. The methodological approaches in these disciplines vary from computational modelling of conflicts and surveys of military performance, to the qualitative study of military stories from the battlefield and veterans experiences. Rapidly developing technological facilities (more powerful hardware, more sophisticated software, digitalization of documents and pictures) render the methodologies in use more dynamic than ever.

The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Military Studies offers a comprehensive and dynamic overview of these developments as they emerge in the many approaches to military studies. The chapters in this Handbook are divided over four parts: starting research, qualitative methods, quantitative methods, and finalizing a study, and every chapter starts with the description of a well-published study illustrating the methodological issues that will be dealt with in that particular chapter. Hence, this Handbook not only provides methodological know-how, but also offers a useful overview of military studies from a variety of research perspectives.

This Handbook will be of much interest to students of military studies, security and war studies, civil-military relations, military sociology, political science and research methods in general.

Part I - Getting started and seeing the context 1. Introduction: what makes the military special? Editors 2. Getting access to the field: insider/outsider perspectives, Eyal Ben-Ari and Yagil Levy 3. Getting on the Same Net: How the Theory-driven Academic can Better Communicate with the Pragmatic Military Client, Nicholas Jans 4. Chapter 4: Reflexivity: Potentially "Dangerous Liaisons", Eyal Ben-Ari 5. Doing military research in conflict environments, Björn Müller-Wille . Studying Host-Nationals in Operational Areas: The Challenge of Afghanistan, William Maley Part II – Qualitative Methods 7. Historical research in the military domain, Floribert Baudet and Eric Sibul 8. Retrieving what’s already there: archival data for research in defense acquisition, Rene Rendon and Keith Snider 9. Process tracing in case studies, Pascal Vennesson and Ina Wiesner 10. Being One of the Guys or the Fly on the Wall? Participant Observation of Veteran Bikers, Rene Moelker 11.In-depth interviewing, Brenda Moore 12. Qualitative data-analysis: seeing the patterns in the fog of Civil-Military Interaction, Sebastiaan Rietjens 13. Visual Communication Research and War, Michael Griffin 14. Researching ‘The most dangerous of all sources’: Egodocuments, Esmeralda Kleinreesink 15. Scrutinizing the Internet in search of "homegrown" terrorism, Risa Brooks Part III - Quantitative Studies 16. Survey Research in Military Settings, James Griffith 17. Longitudinal Design in Using Surveys in Military Research: Common Challenges and Techniques, Jing Han and Manon Andres 18. Multilevel Analysis: The Examination of Hierarchical Data in Military Research, Irina Goldenberg and Joseph Soeters 19. Cross national research in the military: comparing operational styles, Chiara Ruffa and Joseph Soeters 20. Experimental Methods in Military and Veteran Studies, Jeremy Teigen 21. The empirical analysis of conflicts, using databases, Min Ye and Uk Heo 22. Computational modeling to study conflicts and terrorism,Joseph Young and Michael Findley 23. Evaluating Peace Operations: Challenges and Dimensions, Daniel Druckman and Paul Diehl 24. Business Analytics Research in Military Organizations, Jan-Bert Maas, Paul C. van Fenema and Jan-Kees Schakel Part IV - The end 25. A New Approach to Doing Military Ethics, Celestino Perez 26. Theory Building in Research on the Military, Eyal Ben-Ari 27. Doing Practical Research and Publishing in Military Studies, Patricia Shields and Travis Whetsell

Joseph Soeters is Professor of Organization Studies at the Netherlands Defence Academy and Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He has published extensively in international academic journals and authored and (co-)edited several books.

Patricia M. Shields is Professor of Political Science at Texas State University, USA. She has been the editor-in-chief of Armed Forces & Society, the leading journal in military studies, since 2001. She has published extensively on the military.

Sebastiaan Rietjens is Associate Professor at the Netherlands Defence Academy, and a reserve major in the Netherlands army. He has done extensive fieldwork in military operations and has published in journals and books.