Sage Publications How to Do Your Research Project: A Guide for Students

Great book

This book was a requirement of a Master's degree course I took. I did not find it as helpful or as detailed as the book, "Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches" by John W. Creswell. I would not purchase it again.

The fact that I've never felt compelled to review anything on Amazon other than this book says magnitudes of what I think of it. If you are a higher-level student in the social sciences who leans towards the more professional end of the research spectrum, this book is probably not for you. It does not go into minute detail about the various aspects of academic research, nor does it present revolutionary ideas about how to gather information or avoid plagiarism. Rather, I feel that Gary Thomas presents the core aspects of research, but gives the student the confidence and curiosity to tailor the approach to his/her individual project.Gary Thomas resists the urge to over-load the book with superfluous information, a frustrating problem I encountered when searching for other research guides. One part of the book's layout I greatly appreciate is the beginning of each chapter, which has a chart showing how the particular chapter fits into the layout of the research paper (i.e. Internet research strategies corresponds to the literature review). Also, the end of each chapter has a checklist summarising the main tips he gives.It should be noted this book is geared towards British students; North American and Continental European students will probably be unfamiliar with some of his academic terminology and website recommendations. Gary Thomas' own research area is education, and he more or less has that discipline monopolise all the recommendations and examples in the book. My one complaint is that I would have liked to see him mention tips for other social science disciplines like political science and history.I have yet to complete my own research project, so the jury is still out on whether this book will help me get the grade I am aiming for. I can say for certain that some of the sanity-saving tips he provides (like breaking down the project into week-by-week chunks) are worth the cost of this book. I would not like to think where I would be in my research project if I hadn't found this book as my trusty guide.

Easy to read and follow for research. I bought this as it was a required textbook for a class.

This is a really well written, easy to read, even enjoyable book to help get started with the dissertation process. I would say it is probably more useful for an undergraduate dissertation, but is an excellent starting point for my Masters work too.I find it hard to read long texts explaining what to do and how to do it, but Gary Thomas writes in such an uncomplicated way that it is easy to get through, and helps motivate me for the next stages of the dissertation process.For my MA I am using this text along with:- John Biggam, Succeeding with your Master's Dissertation (one step further with the detail, and more specific to Masters students with some useful tips)- Judith Bell, Doing your research project (it's a classic, and easy to see why)- The good research guide, Martyn Denscombe (excellent, with just the right amount of detail, a bit more than an overview)Just to point out all the books above are great, and are proving very useful, but mainly as 'starting points'. So once I have figured out my methodological approach, for example, I will then turn to a more detailed text such as, research methods in education (Cohen et al)