This book is a critical guide to conducting investigations under time- and resource-pressured conditions, equipping readers with the key skills and approaches for research designed to influence or inform development policies. Unlike a simple 'how to' guide, Research Skills for Policy and Development also provides a critique of various methods and situates these approaches within 'real life' organisational settings, enabling those working in or studying development to locate, evaluate and use relevant information quickly but rigorously. The successor to Finding Out Fast (SAGE, 1998) it reflects the changes in development management theories and practice over the last seven years, and includes new material and advice on critical use of the web as a resource and research tool. It is essential reading for development managers in NGOs and public sector agencies as well as students of development management and development studies more generally.
This fully photocopiable teaching resource provides tutors with a varied and lively range of learning activities and exercises to use with students to help equip them with the skills needed to plan for a research project in higher education.
This book equips pre-service language teachers with research and inquiry skills which they can use in the course of their classroom teaching. Research is presented not as an additional burden in teachers’ busy lives but as an integrated tool for satisfying their curiosity, developing an investigative stance, and strengthening the links between theory and practice. Over the course of the book, the authors introduce and encourage the use of pedagogically exploitable pedagogic-research activities (PEPRAs) to develop a deeper understanding of pedagogic issues in an engaging, supportive, and collaborative way. This book will be of interest to students and instructors on TESOL and related courses, as well as practitioners working in the teacher training sector.
Developing Research Skills: Key Readings and Critical Thinking Exercises provides students with thought-provoking readings, insightful discussion questions, and critical thinking exercises designed to help them become enlightened consumers of psychological science. The text encourages students to critically evaluate psychological studies, rather than immediately accepting research findings at face value. Through identifying the strengths and weaknesses of various research methodologies, learning to understand a study's inherent limitations, assessing potential variables in the given data, and more, students learn to shrewdly assess various research methods used to produce psychological studies. The carefully selected readings provide students with concrete examples of fundamental research methods concepts, and each reading is complemented by discussion questions that bridge the gap between the learned concept and real-world practice. Emphasizing the need for highly developed critical thinking skills and astute analysis in the field of psychological research, Developing Research Skills is ideal for research methods in psychology courses. Vincent Trofimoff is a social-personality psychologist and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, San Marcos. He has taught research methods in psychology courses for over 20 years, and also has extensive experience teaching statistics, personality, and social psychology courses. He received his master's degree and doctorate, both in social-personality psychology, from the University of California, Riverside.
Research Skills for Journalists is a comprehensive, engaging and highly practical guide to developing the varied skillset needed for producing well researched, quality journalism across a range of platforms. Illustrated with original interviews and case studies, the book guides readers through a clear understanding of sources of news, as well as illustrating the skills needed to undertake successful digital and non-digital research and to conduct interviews for a variety of media. It examines the skills needed for basic data journalism and presents an in-depth exploration of the different research skills specific to producing print and online text, as well as those for broadcast and multimedia journalism. Key research skills explored in the book include: Developing digital research skills, including researching through search engines, messages boards, discussion groups and web forums, social media, apps, and using user generated content Working with data, including sourcing, auditing and analysing data, data visualisation and understanding the importance of accuracy and context Essential non-digital research skills, including telephone technique, using libraries and working with librarians, understanding copyright, working with picture libraries and research services, and producing freedom of information requests Working directly with people to research stories, including the power of persuasion, tracking down great contributors, managing and protecting sources, planning and managing interviews, and interviewing vulnerable people Researching for multimedia production of stories, including researching a radio story, podcast or video story, and planning for outside broadcasts. Research Skills for Journalists also explores specialist research skills needed for working overseas and investigates new areas, which could be used for journalism research in the future. The book is illustrated with original contributions by journalists from a variety of backgrounds; including veteran investigative journalist John Pilger, pioneering data journalist Simon Rogers and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s award-winning reporter Abigail Fielding-Smith. It is an invaluable guide for students and practitioners of journalism to the skills needed for finding and developing original news stories today.
The revised Tomorrow′s Doctors makes it clear that doctors need to be aware of their responsibilities as scholars and scientists and it is therefore vital that students develop excellent research skills. Whilst there are many ′research skills′ books, medical students frequently struggle with understanding the difference between the practices of research, audit, service evaluation, systematic and narrative reviews and when and how to apply them. This book addresses the kinds of questions novice investigators always ask and helps students utilise study designs, data collection tools and analysis effectively.
Designed as a comprehensive introduction to the key phases of research projects, this textbook responds to the lack of guides tailored specifically to management studies. It combines theory and practice to offer a completely rounded introduction.
Concise and engaging, this text covers a wide range of reference sources for research in all genres of music. Through this practical introduction to the key concepts of music research, students will develop a firm understanding of the tools used to gather data, including what types of sourcesexist, how they are arranged, and how they may best be used to do research.
Malcolm Carey provides social work students, academics and practitioners with a practical guide to completion of a small-scale qualitative research project or dissertation. This clear text takes the reader through the process of beginning and developing a research problem or question, defining their objectives and undertaking empirical or literature-based research that involves data collection, analysis, writing up and dissemination. The book also highlights and details potential obstacles, essential techniques and methods, types of theory and methodology used, and presents case studies and ongoing debates involved in qualitative social work research. It suggests ways by which sometimes difficult processes (such as the literature review, interviews with practitioners, etc.) can be made easier to complete and explores traditional methods such as the focus group or interview alongside less conventional methodologies such as participative, narrative, discourse or ICT-related approaches. Recent investigation has highlighted the lack of research skills held by many social workers in practice. This book overcomes these problems by providing an essential and easily accessible guidebook to qualitative research methods for social work students and practitioners as well as being of interest to tutors who teach research methods to social work students or supervise dissertations.
