Abstract
It can be intimidating to pick up a research topic, develop hypotheses, conduct literature survey, find respondents, collect data, analyse data (critically), draw inferences and finally prepare a thesis. The book under review can especially be helpful in an attempt to understand and manage the research process. In fact, research implies that the researcher has to play dual roles—he/she should be a knowledge consumer as well as a knowledge producer. This superlative tome emphasizes both the aspects.
The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project is a mesmerizing journey of 15 chapters that does justice to the different aspects of research from the conception to the dissemination stages. The first chapter explores the needs and utilities of research and the position of a reflexive researcher. It examines research as a creative and strategic process that involves constant assessing, reassessing, making decisions and drawing credible conclusions. It also brings out the fact that what many researchers consider as research might in fact be methodolatry (method + idolatry) wherein instead of paying attention to the actual substance of research, the researcher might have a slavish attachment and devotion to certain methods only which have been used for conducting the research.
A researcher might require support, guidance, advice and perspective while conducting research. The second chapter is devoted to just these issues. It spells out the re-quirements of research—such as meeting deadlines, word limits, obtaining ethics approval, avoiding plagiarism. The chapter also offers a checklist of resources—such as funding, library facilities, workshops, software, accommodation—which a researcher may require, and for which, in fact, there might be a provision in the statutes of the university or organization but the researcher may not be aware of. During research, it is essential for a researcher to develop a healthy rapport with the supervisor. The chapter contains strategies for facilitating a meaningful supervisor–student relationship and provides valuable tips to those researchers for whom procrastination has become a part and parcel of their lives. The third chapter explores the roles of power, politics, ethics in research and the as-sumptions and biases which a researcher may suffer from. The fourth chapter investigates how a research question—which might invariably change or evolve during the early stages of a project—defines an investigation, sets bound-aries, provides direction and acts as frame for assessing the researcher’s work. The chapter dwells on the power of a tool known as concept map, which helps in linear as well as lateral thinking. The chapter also provides answer to the dilemma which researchers face—developing the research question. The chapter contains numerous sources of research questions and deals with the pillars on which a hypothesis rests: logical conjecture, variables and a relationship that can be tested.
The fifth chapter performs a preliminary study of the elements of the research proposal such as title, summary/abstract, aims/objectives, research question/hypothesis, introduction/background/rationale, literature review, theor-etical perspectives, limitations/delimitations, ethical considerations, timeline, budget/funding and references. The sixth chapter explores the different types of literatures, assessing the relevance of the literature and writing the formal literature review. The seventh chapter explores the relationship between methodology and methods. Often researchers have a pre-decided notion that they will conduct ethnography or a population study, or perhaps conduct a series of interviews without critically examining what their research question really and logically requires. One basic tenet of research in the field of social sciences is that there should be a secure relationship between the researcher’s question and the researcher’s design. The chapter examines the intricacies of designing a research plan. The eighth chapter delves deep into quantitative, qualitative, mixed approaches, the role of intervening or confounding variables, the strengths and challenges associated with experiments and the significance of exploring a population’s knowledge attitudes and practices.
The ninth chapter throws light on the relationships in evaluative research. It examines the various situations that can arise and their outcomes if the ‘clients’ seek honest feedback or validation, or seek to meet funding requirements; and the evaluators whose style tends to be that of the critics or the unbiased scientists, or that of a facilitator/mentor or that of a politician. The tenth chapter is devoted to obtaining responses from diverse respondent groups, constructing a representative sampling frame and deriving illumination from real-life cases. The eleventh chapter explores direct data collection through surveys (census, cross-sectional surveys, descriptive surveys, explanatory surveys, trend surveys, panel study, face-to-face surveys, telephone surveys, self-administered surveys) and interviews (formal, informal, structured, semi-structured, un-structured one-on-one interview, multiple interview, focus group). The chapter throws light into important issues such as developing a questionnaire, pilot survey and scaling techniques. The twelfth chapter explores indirect data collection techniques, that is, working with observations and existing text. The thirteenth and the fourteenth chapters are devoted to the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The fifteenth chapter is solely devoted to the most important task of writing an account of the research. The author has provided valuable hints for developing each section of the thesis and provided checklists for developing the draft and subsequent draft copies.
The author has explained technical jargon such as: ontology, epistemology, credibility, cultural artefact analysis, semiotics and hermeneutics through meaningful examples in a concise manner.
Although the book focuses on the philosophy, methodology and dissemination of research, yet it does not cover the technical stuff such as: Poisson distributions, statistical sampling, Cronbach alpha, z-value, chi-square test. It can no doubt be used by the researchers whose roles and responsibilities extend beyond those of the student, and it can serve as a springboard for further learning. The book can be understood by almost any human reader of some intelligence. The author’s easy, storytelling manner animates what would otherwise have been very boring facts. The chapters are crisply written, aided with meaningful diagrams. All the chapters are linked to each other through a logical framework and each chapter unravels certain aspects of the research process. The author has followed a consistent approach throughout the book. Each chapter contains: a chapter preview and chapter summary, and two different types of boxes. In one box, which is unshaded, the complex terms, which form a part of research, have been explained. In another box, which has been shaded in two colours, an eye-opening, inspiring and probing anecdote relating to research has been described. The unique selling proposition of the book is that the author has included some of the sayings of great minds, like Werner Heisenberg, William George Plunkett, William Blake, Ernest Hemingway and Ralph Waldo Emerson, at the beginning of almost every new topic which sets the tone and prepares a base for sound understanding of the section. At the end of each chapter, a list of further readings is given. The book has interesting solutions for those people who are quite good at making themselves miserable, unproductive and physically disorganized. The book also contains a comprehensive list of software which can be helpful in performing qualitative data analysis. The book could have been a little more helpful if it had contained ‘to do’ exercises at the end of each chapter.