Author Biography

Russell K. Schutt, PhD, is a professor and the chair of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a lecturer on sociology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts Mental Health Center). He completed his BA, MA, and PhD (1977) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University (1977-1979). His other books include Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research and Fundamentals of Social Work Research (with Ray Engel), Making Sense of the Social World (with Dan Chambliss), and Research Methods in Psychology (with Paul G. Nestor)--all with SAGE Publications, as well as Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness (Harvard University Press) and Social Neuroscience: Brain, Mind, and Society (coedited with Larry J. Seidman and Matcheri S. Keshavan, also Harvard University Press). Most of his peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters focus on the effect of social context on cognition, satisfaction, functioning, and recidivism, the orientations of service recipients and of service and criminal justice personnel, and the organization of health and social services. He is currently a coinvestigator for a randomized trial of peer support for homeless dually diagnosed veterans, funded by the Veterans Administration. Since 1997, Mark Edwards (Ph.D., University of Washington) has taught stratification, research methods and writing, and social statistics in the Sociology Department at Oregon State University. His recent research on food insecurity has been used by nonprofit groups, state agencies, and the media addressing domestic hunger in the Northwest. Many of his research papers have appeared in social science journals such as Social Forces, Rural Sociology, and Social Science Quarterly. But a favorite part of his work is helping students improve their social science writing.