The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project gives students the knowledge and skills they need to get from ′clueless′ to ′completed′. This highly readable text guides the reader through each stage of their research project, from getting started to writing up, with each chapter clearly explaining a step along the way.

Based on the author′s hugely popular The Essential Guide to Doing Research, this new book retains the warmth, wit and grounded nature of the first, while providing tools to help students through the ins and outs of their own projects, and addressing the key questions students need to tackle, such as:

- What is this thing called research and why do it?

- How can I assure that my research project has integrity?

- How to I develop a researchable question?

- How do I construct a winning proposal?

- What exactly is expected in a literature review?

- What options are there in qualitative, quantitative, mixed and more purposive methodological designs?

- Is it best to work with a sample, key informants, or a case?

- What data collection options are there and how do I choose?

- How should I work with my quantitative data?

- What should I do with my qualitative data?

- How in the world will I capture this on paper?

This is an inspiring book full of down-to-earth advice, illuminating figures and diagrams and engaging real life examples. With this book as your personal mentor, a successfully completed research project is well within reach.

Zina O′Leary is an applied social scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. She is the author of Researching Real-World Problems and The Social Science Jargon Buster.