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Book ReviewOriginally published in The British Journal of Healthcare Computing & Information Management. |
Piet Verschuren & Han Doorewaard (1999). Designing a research project. Lemma: Utrecht.
How many people finish a research project rubbing their hands, saying "that was fun: I can't wait for my next one"? Not many, because pressure, pain, and pitfalls seem to be an inevitable accompaniment. Any advice that can relieve these symptoms is most welcome and the authors of this book seem admirably aware of what can go wrong and how best to avoid it. They emphasise the holistic nature of research where design and implementation stages iterate as later ones cause a re-evaluation of earlier ones. The stages themselves are analysed in detail, using copious examples from many application domains such as business, health, local government, and agriculture. In fact, there are so many scenarios that the reader can become somewhat disorientated switching from one to the other.The strength of the book lies in the mainly successful attempts to identify and operationalise research components. The authors provide a sensible sequence of activities, and outline procedures for both design and implementation, including a summary of research methods. However, this is not a recipe book but, rather, a map of the phases with signposts to more detailed sources of information. Its weakness lies in the language: the book is a translation from the original Dutch and the terminology takes some unravelling. For example, research "objectives", "frameworks", "material", and "issues" are all given specific meanings. The strange application of words and clumping syntax can also trip up the reader: "delineating the concept to manageable proportions"; "confrontation" for compare and contrast; written polls considered as a subset of interviews; etc. Nevertheless, the book can be confidently recommended because it provides important universal principles which may alleviate the unpleasant side-effects of projects if taken as advised.