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Zina O'Leary, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2010, xi + 308 pp., ` 450 (Paperback) .
DOI: 10.1177/097226291101500317
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 requirements 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...