What do you think?
Rate this book
Reading and Understanding Research
There is no way to complete one′s education without encountering a research report. Navigating through the mysteries of reports is the subject of this helpful volume. The authors, presuming their readers have no special background in research, begin by introducing and framing the notion of reading research within a wider social context. Next, they offer insight on when to seek out research, locating and selecting the right reports, and how to help evaluate research for trustworthiness. A step-by-step reading of reports from both qualitative and quantitative studies follows, and the final chapters examine in greater detail the different types of research to be encountered and how to examine the research more critically.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 27, 1998
31 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 20, 2019
I'm not entirely certain who this book is written for. The publisher's description says that it is "appropriate for both upper-level undergraduate and graduate students across the social sciences..." but I maintain that if you're an upper-level undergraduate student (or, worse, a graduate student) in ANY kind of science (social or otherwise), or indeed in any research oriented field of any kind and don't already know the information in this book, then your entire educational career has utterly failed you. I would even go as far as to say that students should not be admitted to college at all without having mastered the basics of reading a research report. However, if you are somehow completely new to reading research reports, this book will give you a decent overview of the basics.
On the plus side, much of the material is covered exhaustively. The reader will find adequate descriptions of some of the broad categories of both qualitative and quantitative research and a reasonably high-quality guide to dissecting a research paper to extract the important information. The reader is also provided with some tips on critically analyzing research which would be useful to someone who's never had to critique an academic paper before but which ultimately don't go deep enough to provide insights to most students.
While I'm glad that the book marks the distinctions between qualitative and quantitative research, I do take issue with the authors' treatments of both subjects.
On the quantitative side, though the authors provide a good summary of the different types of research, they utterly fail the reader to actually understand any of the statistical techniques used. While this isn't a book about statistics, it is simply unforgivable that the authors delay mention of a concept so fundamental as the p-value until Appendix B (and even then, do only a cursory job of explaining what statistical significance actually means). Similarly, when discussing correlation studies (again in the same appendix), the authors neglect to offer even a word of caution regarding the common confusion between correlation and causation. Assuming the reader is as much a neophyte as the rest of the book's contents assume, these omissions leave the reader completely unprepared to critically engage with any kind of statistical research.
With regard to qualitative research, the questions the authors suggest for critical analysis don't have the same glaring omissions. On the other hand, their treatment of qualitative research ignores large portions of that category of research, implying that all qualitative research is subjective. While this is sometimes true, the fact of the matter is that it's entirely possible to objectively obtain non-numerical data, and these types of studies are completely neglected. In their place is a section on "critical theory," which in this reviewer's opinion barely qualifies as research at all.
To be sure, some of my objections to the book's contents (as in my objection to the inclusion of "critical theory") would require a deeper examination of the philosophy of science and the authors might be forgiven for glossing over some of these more abstract issues were it not for the fact that the book's nearly 300 pages find themselves in such want of content that relatively basic concepts are repeated several times. As such, I maintain that this book would have been a better read if it were either a much shorter "concise guide," or a slightly longer work that dealt with more important philosophical issues.
To offer a relatively minor final complaint, I think some of the book's contents are presented out of order. Rather than opening with a discussion on when to and not to trust papers' authors or the use and misuse of research, the authors should have opened with a discussion of the common sections found in a research paper, giving the reader a better frame of reference for understanding the discussion to follow. While the authors do eventually get around to discussing, for instance, the difference between an abstract and an introduction, they do so after the reader is (again, assuming the reader is as new to research as the authors seem to assume) likely already confused by more philosophical content.
Ultimately, if you really don't know how to read a research paper, this book offers a decent but incomplete introduction. For a more complete introduction, consider some of the texts mentioned in the authors' annotated bibliography at the end, but you might consider this book anyway in order to have a reasonably good introduction all in one volume. However, if you are like what I assume must be the vast majority of the book's stated target audience and already reasonably well-versed in reading academic papers, you'll find little of value here.
On the plus side, much of the material is covered exhaustively. The reader will find adequate descriptions of some of the broad categories of both qualitative and quantitative research and a reasonably high-quality guide to dissecting a research paper to extract the important information. The reader is also provided with some tips on critically analyzing research which would be useful to someone who's never had to critique an academic paper before but which ultimately don't go deep enough to provide insights to most students.
While I'm glad that the book marks the distinctions between qualitative and quantitative research, I do take issue with the authors' treatments of both subjects.
On the quantitative side, though the authors provide a good summary of the different types of research, they utterly fail the reader to actually understand any of the statistical techniques used. While this isn't a book about statistics, it is simply unforgivable that the authors delay mention of a concept so fundamental as the p-value until Appendix B (and even then, do only a cursory job of explaining what statistical significance actually means). Similarly, when discussing correlation studies (again in the same appendix), the authors neglect to offer even a word of caution regarding the common confusion between correlation and causation. Assuming the reader is as much a neophyte as the rest of the book's contents assume, these omissions leave the reader completely unprepared to critically engage with any kind of statistical research.
With regard to qualitative research, the questions the authors suggest for critical analysis don't have the same glaring omissions. On the other hand, their treatment of qualitative research ignores large portions of that category of research, implying that all qualitative research is subjective. While this is sometimes true, the fact of the matter is that it's entirely possible to objectively obtain non-numerical data, and these types of studies are completely neglected. In their place is a section on "critical theory," which in this reviewer's opinion barely qualifies as research at all.
To be sure, some of my objections to the book's contents (as in my objection to the inclusion of "critical theory") would require a deeper examination of the philosophy of science and the authors might be forgiven for glossing over some of these more abstract issues were it not for the fact that the book's nearly 300 pages find themselves in such want of content that relatively basic concepts are repeated several times. As such, I maintain that this book would have been a better read if it were either a much shorter "concise guide," or a slightly longer work that dealt with more important philosophical issues.
To offer a relatively minor final complaint, I think some of the book's contents are presented out of order. Rather than opening with a discussion on when to and not to trust papers' authors or the use and misuse of research, the authors should have opened with a discussion of the common sections found in a research paper, giving the reader a better frame of reference for understanding the discussion to follow. While the authors do eventually get around to discussing, for instance, the difference between an abstract and an introduction, they do so after the reader is (again, assuming the reader is as new to research as the authors seem to assume) likely already confused by more philosophical content.
Ultimately, if you really don't know how to read a research paper, this book offers a decent but incomplete introduction. For a more complete introduction, consider some of the texts mentioned in the authors' annotated bibliography at the end, but you might consider this book anyway in order to have a reasonably good introduction all in one volume. However, if you are like what I assume must be the vast majority of the book's stated target audience and already reasonably well-versed in reading academic papers, you'll find little of value here.
December 21, 2014
Assigned as pre-reading at the start of a doctoral program, this book provides a solid overview to reading not only research, but scholarly writing in general. The book is well-written and easy to read, breaking down an unnecessarily difficult process into manageable chunks. For anyone not accustomed to reading research and other scholarly writing, I would highly recommend it.
December 30, 2015
Good book at the start of a graduate program. Well organized; easy to understand. Definitely not arm-chair reading.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews