Customer Reviews

The Graduate Research Guidebook: A Practical Approach to Doctoral/Masters Research

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As someone who works privately with graduate students, helping them design and develop research papers, I highly recommend this book. It "demystifies" the research process. As the title states, the book offers a practical approach by anticipating and answering students' questions about the research process. It is one of the most practical guidebooks I have come across in recent years.

I found the Balian Graduate Research Guidebook to be very useful primarily because of his practicle approach. The content is clearly written and approaches difficult concepts of quantitative and qualitative research methods. It even includes a strategy for defense of your topic. I am looking forward to a new edition of this guidebook. However, this guidebook is still very useful.

I am a PhD candidate in Law and Economics. First Year. So, my needs are quite specific at this stage: I want a book which will give me very practical ways to develop a structure for what will one day perhaps culminate in a tome called my PHD.

The problem with this book is that it does not have much ambition. It is perhaps useful for STUDENTS OF SCIENCE beginning the Masters . First year; in other words fresh out of college.

I give it a very low rating because it offers one diagram about how to develop a graduate research structure; this diagram is then referred to in every chapter ad nauseum as if it was actually going to help the perplexed student in some way. The diagram is so basic that it made me wonder if I had drawn it-- in college. The diagram was useful to the extent that it told me things I already knew about developing a structure.

So, for those still reading: This book is not really meant for students who have tuned in to Amazon.com for the purpose of finding a GRADUATE level research GUIDEBOOK which is meant to help the researcher build a structure.

It doesn't ask the right questions to help the researcher ask the right questions.

Not worth the time spent rubbing your hands in anticipation for the book to land in your mailbox.

Signed with a great deal of first year jitters, A Squid in Tokyo