The Illustrated Guide to Social Science Research

Divya Sharma, Ph.D. (Sociology), is a seasoned professor of Justice and Law Administration at Western Connecticut State University, USA. She holds a doctorate in Sociology, along with master’s degrees in Sociology and Criminal Justice.

Her research spans a broad spectrum of social science themes, including informal banking systems, visual criminology, cultural communication, white-collar crime, and cross-cultural research ethics. She has carried out empirical fieldwork and data collection across diverse contexts—including India, Kenya, and the United States—giving her a distinctive global and multicultural perspective.

Divya Sharma specializes in program and policy evaluation, survey and field research, and the ethical challenges of conducting research in non-western and cross-cultural settings—particularly in digital and globalized environments.

As an educator, she has developed and taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in sociology, criminal justice, homeland security, and research methodology. She also supervises student research projects involving both primary and secondary data collection and analysis.

She is the author of the book The Illustrated Guide to Social Science Research (2024), a highly accessible and illustration-rich textbook that simplifies core social science research methods—including survey design, sampling, experiments, qualitative methods, data organization, and research ethics—for students and novice researchers.

In addition, she authored the textbook Fundamentals of Criminology (2019) and served as editor of Ethics, Ethnocentrism and Social Science Research (2021), further contributing to scholarship on criminology, cultural research ethics, and global sociology.

Her work is valued by students, academics, and practitioners worldwide who seek rigorous yet accessible guidance in social science research, policy evaluation, and cross-cultural studies.