This book shares the stories of five students who successfully completed MEd dissertations and PhD theses and the “lessons learned” from their experiences that others might learn from as well. The book is organized into five parts, with each part subdivided into chapters. Each of the five main sections ends with a suggested reading list and a checklist that summarizes the main points and offers additional advice and helpful hints to student researchers. The book concludes with a brief Postscript that synthesizes the lessons learned across the individual stories. The book also contains a fairly extensive Glossary; and the concepts contained in the glossary are highlighted within the text. This review begins with a peek into each of the book's five parts, which is followed by three themes I'm calling blurred genres, cross‐cultural confusions, and ethnocentric confessions.
The book's first part, the “Descriptive study”, relates Helen's experience with completing her dissertation for her Master's in Education. The section offers a justification for conducting descriptive studies, explores whether or not a descriptive study requires hypotheses, and distinguishes between descriptive and inferential statistics. Part 1 further illustrates the difficulties Helen encountered with conducting what seemed like a simple, straightforward descriptive study of occupational therapy students’ preparation for college work. Helen's story demonstrates that questionnaire development is not easy and basic knowledge of statistics and software packages is helpful even for analysis of descriptive statistics.
Part 2 shares another Master's student's dissertation experience; Gilbert's “Evaluation study”. Gilbert also used a questionnaire and the intent of his study was to gauge nursing students’ perceptions of their degree program and the nursing profession in Singapore. This portion of the book recreates Gilbert's thought process as he moved from his initial hunches about nursing preparation programs to the development of a conceptual framework from which he distilled significant concepts about nursing education that were then operationalized for his questionnaire. The section explains Gilbert's use of descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients to determine the strength of relationships among the variables. Issues raised in relation to Gilbert's study included the difference between anonymity and confidentiality in survey research, how correlation differs from claims of causation, and the need for setting parameters for what can be reasonably accomplished within resource constraints.
The Master's dissertation of student Cher Ping's “Experimental study” is the topic of Part 3. Cher Ping examined the benefits of computer‐based learning in a Singapore college economics class. He did so through using a computer‐based learning software program with an experimental group and compared their performance with a control group of students who received traditional economics instruction. Some of the concepts illustrated in this part of the book include dependent and independent variables, hypothesis testing, and use of t‐tests to compare the outcomes of the two groups. However, Cher Ping also conducted interviews and actually taught the class using the experimental technology and incorporated observation as another form of data collection. Thus, this research design combined quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
Part 4 uses a doctoral student's thesis to illustrate the “Ethnographic study”. The student, Jan, used ethnographic methodology to understand the culture of the compulsory education system in Western Australia and stakeholders beliefs about the construct of “truancy”. This part of the book illustrated concepts associated with traditional ethnographic fieldwork methods that Jan employed in her study, such as review of official documents, key informant interviews, and participant observation. Jan's study demonstrates how easy it is to become lost in the vast amounts of data produced through ethnographic fieldwork. Part 4 emphasizes the importance of not losing sight of what the study is about and the need to periodically revisit the research questions. This section stresses how essential it is to develop a system of qualitative data management and to start the analysis and writing process soon after the first data are collected.
The type of research detailed in Part 5 comes from Tim's doctoral thesis, the “Survey study”. The purpose of Tim's study was to examine stakeholder attitudes about student evaluation of teaching in an Asian setting and then compare the results to research conducted in Western settings. Tim undertook an in‐depth review of the literature that was explained in some detail. This section also used his work to demonstrate the concepts of reliability and validity as they applied to critiquing extant research. Other concepts highlighted in this section were the processes Tim used to develop the research questions and survey constructs, and his use of Spearman's rank‐order coefficient (Spearman's rho), and Chi square methods of statistical analysis.
Blurred genres
The stories contained in this book in some ways illustrate Geertz’ (1983) notion of “blurred genres”. Although Geertz (1983) was referring to blurring of boundaries among various types of qualitative methodologies, this volume includes studies that represent an amalgam of qualitative and quantitative methodologies under familiar, yet strange names for types of studies. The labels “descriptive”, “evaluation”, “experimental”, “ethnographic” and “survey” sounded familiar and I recognized the words used to name them, but at times my own understandings did not match the specific methods employed in the conduct of these studies. I was perplexed by the definitions and distinctions among seemingly arbitrary labels.
For example, surveys were the primary instrument of choice for three of the five studies, but only one was labeled “survey study”. The descriptive study indeed described the phenomenon and made no attempt to explain the findings, but used a survey as the data collection instrument. Descriptive studies can and do make use of descriptive statistics, but studies that employ qualitative methods such as observations and interviews can also provide a rich, thick description of the phenomenon under study, and are considered descriptive studies (e.g. Lawrence‐Lightfoot, 1981), if the researcher leaves the interpretation to the reader (Patton, 2002). Moreover, qualitative and ethnographic studies sometimes include descriptive statistics to provide demographic and contextual information (e.g. Peshkin, 1978; Valdes, 1996).
In his experimental study, Cher Ping did compare two matched groups of students, with one group receiving “treatment”. and the other group receiving traditional instruction, yet he also collected qualitative data through interviews and observation. I would consider his research design mixed method more than an example of a classic experimental study. As lines between genres continues to blur, it is perhaps more difficult to so neatly categorize types of studies in this way. However, I do not intend to diminish the overall quality and rigor of the five studies, which was quite evident throughout the book.
Although I found the labels applied to the studies not particularly helpful, the volume contains a lot of useful information and good advice around both the technical and the personal aspects of conducting a research project. The extensive glossary was well done and I especially liked the format of drawing attention to glossary terms throughout the text through the use of bold italic font. The importance of thoroughly grounding the study in the literature, gaining access and consent, and piloting instruments were topics that cut across all five studies and cannot be underscored enough to students (and their advisors). The authors offer other practical advice for students engaging in research by pointing out the value of prior planning, establishing reasonable time frames, recognizing constraints, anticipating problems, and the self‐discipline and fortitude needed to see a study through to its completion.
Cross‐cultural confusions
The book was an amusing and sometimes confusing illustration of cultural differences in the English language. In the USA, Master's students typically complete a thesis, whereas dissertations are the culminating research studies of doctoral students. Abbreviations readily apparent in one context can look like gibberish in another. I am still mystified by the use of acronyms such as GCSE and GCE O; even when they were explained I was not sure how they translated into my limited understanding of educational attainments in the UK, Australia, and Singapore.
Ethnocentric confessions
Reading this book made me much more self‐conscious of my own lack of global awareness as well as the ethnocentric tendencies of my writing. It also raised an appreciation for the need to be precise when writing and not to assume that my audience is always comprised of fellow Americans. I often read works by authors outside of the USA yet this book was written in less formal vernacular, which was simultaneously charming and exasperating. I think I've finally come to understand Helen's “wretched grids” and the differences between certificate and diploma as used in Singapore (as opposed to conferral of a degree in the USA).
All in all, I found the book to be written in a comfortable, accessible manner that any student working on a thesis or dissertation anywhere in the world could relate to and should find reassuring. I especially enjoyed the international flavor of the various contexts in which the research projects were conducted. The idea of completing a Master's or Doctoral degree via distance learning is most intriguing, but I suppose that is a book waiting to be written.
