Synopses & Reviews
Practicing Research: Discovering Evidence That Matters provides research consumers with the skills necessary for discovering evidence that matters.This book is designed for students, practitioners or researchers who are planning to review research for best practices or are actually selecting programs right now. Author Arlene Fink assumes that each person who reads it has a passing familiarity with the idea of research, but no special research expertise is necessary.
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.
Synopsis
Practicing Research: Discovering Evidence That Matters provides students, practitioners, and researchers with guidance on best practices. The book s eight chapters correspond to the skills that research consumers need to discover evidence that matters. Author Arlene Fink pays special attention to facilitating student learning by offeringing over a hundred examples, exercises, tables, figures, and checklists, as well as an extensive glossary. All the examples are taken from existing research and programs and grounded in the practitioner s reality.Key FeaturesProvides 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 take the student from needs assessment to program implementation and evaluation through to implementation of resultsShows how to engage diverse stakeholders (communities, teachers) in the research processAccompanied by a companion Web site at www.sagepub.com/finkstudythat consists of Web exercises for students for each chapter
Intended Audience
This text is intended to be the core text or one of the primary texts for applied research courses at the graduate level in Education, Social Work, Public Administration and Policy, Evaluation, Health, Nursing, and Criminal Justice. Readers should have a passing familiarity with the idea of research, but no special research expertise is necessary.