Higher Education Research & Development ISSN: 0729-4360 (Print) 1469-8366 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cher20 Doing your research project. A guide for first-time researchers Anna-Marie Babey To cite this article: Anna-Marie Babey (2019): Doing your research project. A guide for first-time researchers, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2019.1675294 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1675294 Published online: 17 Oct 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 49 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cher20 HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT BOOK REVIEW Doing your research project. A guide for first-time researchers, by Judith Bell with Stephen Waters, 6th Ed., Berkshire, UK, McGraw-Hill Education, 2014, 273 pages (306 including the Glossary, References and Index), (paperback), ISBN-13 978-0-3352-6446-9 This book provides some valuable information for social, educational and allied health practice research. It is well written and employs a relaxed, conversational approach that generally works well. Further, the summary at the start and checklists at the end of each chapter are particularly helpful. It has the potential to be a resource to which the researcher will return repeatedly as a user-friendly tool to assist in their progress throughout their project. Of particular note is the first chapter, which provides a very good overview of different methodologies that are commonly employed in these areas of research. Part II of this book expands this discussion with chapters covering the use of documentary evidence, social media, questionnaires, interviews, diaries and similar material and various forms of observation. Each of these chapters provides sufficient detail to the new social science researcher to enable them to consider which approach/approaches they might employ and importantly why they might choose to employ them. However, despite its potential usefulness, there are a number of matters that would need to be considered critically by the reader before this book can really be viewed as the guide the book’s title suggests. The following issues should be addressed in a serious dialogue with one’s collaborators and/or research supervisors before relying on this as a tool to guide research. Overall the chapter on ethical considerations is solid, with the essential issues addressed in sufficient detail. Unfortunately, the potential need for ethics approval for small projects is given short shrift, which is a serious concern. The authors state: ‘The informal route will still apply for many 100-hour studies as long as whoever is in charge is convince of your integrity and the worth of your research’ (p.47), wherein ‘the informal route’ means that ethics approval is not required. However, the purpose of obtaining ethics approval is not about one’s personal integrity or the worth of the research; it provides protection for the participating individuals. Regardless of the duration of a study, discussion of the ethical considerations with the human ethics office of the university or institution in question is essential, even if outright approval is ultimately not required. Having this conversation solely with the person responsible for the research is not only inadequate, it is irresponsible. It is well recognised that problems can arise between supervisor and student. To address this issue, in Part I, the authors recommend establishing ground rules early in the project. They also provide insight into what to do should the need for a transfer of supervision be required. Unfortunately, an anecdote about Stephen Waters’ research is very concerning and is ill advised in this context. As a bench scientist, I was appalled by the fact that it appears that he did his research in a near-complete vacuum. As an exemplar of how things can go askew even with the best of intentions, this example was a poor choice for a book that includes student researchers amongst its audience, as it might send the signal that they will have to go it alone without support. Additionally, while the conversational tone of this book is one of its strengths, its occasional lapses into editorialising often works against the points the authors are trying to make. As an example, the first couple of sentences under the heading of ‘A lot of fuss about nothing?’ could set up an unconscious bias in the neophyte researcher that 2 BOOK REVIEW referencing is nothing but trouble. Further, it could impede a diligent and systematic approach that would have the added benefit of ensuring that the researcher avoids plagiarism. As an added concern, while Google does have a number of advantages over other search engines, and the company has developed a number of additional products that interlink with its browser platform that can be quite useful, the reader is inclined to wonder why the authors have chosen to focus on this company and its products to the virtual exclusion of others, to the point of meriting its own heading (and this isn’t the only chapter in which that occurs). In addition, an inordinate amount of attention is paid to the Harvard referencing format and only a single sentence in a side box addresses the fact that the reader should ‘consult … the system your institution requires you to use’. Given that the preferred referencing format can vary widely between fields of study, as well as within and between institutions, the discussion of referencing in Chapter 4 is quite limited. The focus on a critical analysis rather than merely reportage of the literature in Chapter 6 is very welcome. However, despite the emphasis on a review being critical, an analytical approach is lacking in the justification of the examples chosen to demonstrate best practice. The fact that someone has published a number of papers says nothing to the quality of those papers. Further, although there are a number of tools available to evaluate the quality of research articles, the section on ‘Evaluating sources’ in Chapter 5 doesn’t mention any of them. Instead, the focus is on advice from Internet Detective, with specific reference to the URL for this site. Discussion of bias, both on the part of the participants and/or the materials they generate and on the part of the researcher(s) is addressed piecemeal throughout various chapters in Part II, with the largest section (not quite 1.5 pages) found in the ‘Planning and Conducting Interviews’ chapter (Chapter 10). As this is a key concern across almost all types of research, but particularly in social science and clinical medicine research, it would have been helpful to either have a chapter devoted to it in Part I or to have included it as part of the discussion of ethics (Chapter 3). Consideration of bias must also include a discussion of the possibility that data acquired by observation is susceptible to the Hawthorne effect, which is not mentioned in the chapter dedicated to this data collection approach (Chapter 12) or in Part III on data analysis and report writing. Given that it is quite common for open-ended questions to be included both in questionnaires and interviews, a discussion of thematic analysis in the ‘Interpreting the Evidence and Reporting the Findings’ chapter (Chapter 13) would be helpful. While this is addressed indirectly, it deserves more than a scant half page and more importantly, deserves better than the suggestion to put a single answer to an individual question on a single sheet of paper for manual sorting. This approach is an unusually analogue choice in a digital world, particularly given the enumeration of digital tools elsewhere in this slim volume. Given the extensive attention elsewhere in this book about the use of technology, this is a surprising omission. There are tools that can help to organise responses for further analysis (e.g., NVivo, Leximancer), although it is important to note that they shouldn’t be relied on as analytical tools. While this book has the potential to be an asset to those engaged in social science research, despite its claims, that is its sole audience. The bench sciences such as chemistry, physics, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology and pharmacology, as well as other fields such as mathematics, computer science and information technology are not considered at all. Further, it is primarily intended for the UK context, as evidenced by specific mention of UK guidelines and legislation throughout the text. HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 3 Overall, there is a potential place for this book in the arsenal of the first-time social science researcher. However, readers need to be judicious about how they engage with it and what they take from it. Anna-Marie Babey University of New England, Australia ababey@une.edu.au © 2019 Anna-Marie Babey https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1675294