Practicing Research
Discovering Evidence That Matters
- Arlene Fink - UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
The book has eight chapters corresponding to the skills that research consumers need to discover evidence that matters. Fink pays special attention to facilitating student learning by providing over a hundred examples, flowcharts, tables, and checklists as well as an extensive glossary. (Students who are interested in any specific topic can further their knowledge by using the related website, which contains links to other sites as well as additional examples and exercises). All the examples are taken from existing research and programs and grounded in the practitioner's reality.
Key Features:
Provides methods for determining the validity of evidence and how to justify an acceptable level of "proof" based on science, experience, and values
Offers practical frameworks to guide the research process and which take the student from needs assessment to program implementation and evaluation through to implementation of results.
Shows how to engage diverse stakeholders (communities, teachers) in the research process
Contains an Instructor's Resources CD with supplemental studies and exercises for students; some of the studies and exercises are linked to studies on the internet so that students are required to practice the tools and concepts presented in the book.
"Fink excels in [her] introduction to research design and includes a useful discussion on threats to internal and external validity, [...] a particular strength of the work."
The course content has changed. However, sections of this book are useful to our students doing capstone projects
An excellent text providing the researcher with vital information to establish how to undertake good research with meaning.
Excellent book for evidence based research needed by DNP students, who are expected to conduct evidenced based projects.
Fink's excellent clarity of writing and well-structured text makes her book a superb supplement to a text that is more directly about programme evaluation.
Adequatley shows students how to explicate evidence to incorporate into research.
It was clearly written for students in a beginning research course, was skill based in terms of searching and evaluating the literature, and was offered at a reasonable cost.
While this text probably could work for my research methods in health course, it focuses primarily on
"evidence based medicine." The cost is reasonable.
