This convenient sized book opens with a useful overview of each chapter’s contents, as handy for the busy reader as for this reviewer. It is worth stating at the outset that this title is largely intended as a guide for the social or behavioural scientist wishing to use the Internet as a research tool, as opposed to someone seeking guidance on conducting a literature review. The book’s intended readership is the practising researcher with at least a passing familiarity with computer and Web‐based technologies. However, I believe a large portion of the text would be both accessible and valuable to final year undergraduates, or postgraduate students interested in exploring aspects of the Internet as a research tool. The subject examples covered are broadly within social and behavioural sciences, as the title intimates. However, as the authors admit their own disciplinary background does result in many examples being slanted towards psychology. While the text is at pains to avoid becoming a computer instruction manual, as interfaces of the online sources covered will naturally alter over time, it does dip into this area and provide stepwise instruction for accessing certain resources. The second chapter begins by defining what can be considered the Internet for the purposes of this book starting with discussion groups, before progressing to consider catalogues, indexes, and full text resources. The third chapter considers the validity of the Internet as a research tool, with particular reference to how to sample an online population. This continues by looking at a range of social research methodologies, covering not just the drawbacks of these techniques but the advantages that can be achieved through using the Internet for these kinds of studies. Chapter four looks at the various technologies that the Internet researcher can employ from FTP to Telnet through HTML to scripting languages.
Having dealt with technology and methodologies, the fifth chapter concentrates on the design and implementation issues including dealing with accuracy, bias, and ensuring sufficient participant response rates. The authors also postulate ten simple guiding principles to which they believe all researchers performing research in this way should adhere. The later half of this chapter provides sample code (HTML, CGI, scripting language, etc.) to allow the reader to build their own, simple, online surveys. Some coverage of freely available survey creation tools is also included. Chapter six considers further the inherent problems with online‐based research including malicious attempts to corrupt the research data, but also the methodological flaws that can confound the neophyte researcher. The penultimate chapter concentrates on researcher case studies intended to demonstrate practical examples of Internet mediated research. Procedures are outlined, alongside the difficulties encountered, and considerations for revision and improvement of technique. Finally, the book is brought to a conclusion with some reflection on the various issues raised.
Copious URLs and references are scattered throughout the book, allowing the reader to follow‐up or investigate the resources covered. Only a limited number of illustrations are included, confined mostly to screenshots of sample Web surveys in the middle portion of the book. If there was a nagging flaw to the text, it is the US bias to the range of useful resources identified. While the rest of the world is not totally ignored, this does limit to some degree the appeal of the text to readers outside North America. However, the real world case studies and examples throughout significantly make up for this deficit.
Overall this is a good book, though perhaps a touch overpriced for only 155 pages. This would certainly be an excellent addition to an institutional library, though perhaps a less essential purchase for those outside the USA.
