Conducting meaningful experiments : 40 steps to becoming a scientist /

This slim but packed volume is written for prospective researchers in the social and health sciences. The writing style is lively, encouraging, upbeat. Bausell brings science and procedure down to earth without sacrificing respect for rigor and complexity. He openly promotes "meaningful" research--research with the potential for helping people and improving the human condition. He also regards research as meaningful when it contributes to revision of theory and to basic science. He stresses honesty at all states of research, including acknowledging personal motives, research errors, serendipity, and so on. He conveys the accumulation aspect of building and revising scientific knowledge. The volume assumes basic course work in research design, and goes on to explain the whys of some conventions, pointing the way toward maximizing chances of obtaining statistically and socially significant findings. The "40 steps" are similar to explanations personally given by research advisors to student after student; but here they are systematically and coherently presented. Recommended for all institutions with undergraduate or graduate research requirements in the social and health sciences. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate. C. T. Fischer; Duquesne University