Overview

A new book which, essentially, arose from the author’s inability as an instructor to find a textbook that fully met her needs or the needs of her students! Overly comprehensive texts generate blank faces and overly concise texts fail to fully meet the need for an effective depth of learning.

This new text achieves a great balance between the depth of coverage and readability, but balance is not the only reason this book is needed. Reflecting the movement toward evidence based practice in audiology and speech-language pathology, the author has ensured that the concepts associated with evidence based practice are integrated throughout the various chapters (not just added as a separate chapter or course segment). Also included are features that help students in being more active in learning the material. Each chapter has a set of review questions or case scenarios that can be used as homework, as probe questions in class, or as group activities. Importantly, the author has included lists of supplemental readings from the research literature in the field.

Review

• James Mahshie, PhD, CCC-SLP, George Washington University, Doody's Review Service, (2009):
  "The straightforward way the topics are presented is a strength of the book. ... The topics are integrated well to give a broad picture of the research landscape. ... By demonstrating the connction between these topics, the author makes qualitative research understandable, and helps students understand its strengths and limitations as comapared to quantitative research."

Audience

Primary Subject: Speech and Language Pathology / Research Methods
Audience Level: Professional/Textbook - Desk Copy

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Empirical and Nonempirical Research: An Overview
  • Systematic Inquiry
  • Some Roles for Research
  • Types of Research
  • Variables
  • Getting Started with Research
  • Summary
• Chapter 2: Ethical Considerations
  • Protection of Human Participants
  • Special Protections
  • Historical Perspective
  • Institutional Review Boards
  • Credit for Intellectual Effort
  • Attribution of Ideas
  • Accuracy in Reporting Information
  • Avoiding Conflicts of Interest
  • Confidentiality and Privacy
  • Summary
• Chapter 3: Identifying and Formulating Research Questions
  • Identifying Important Questions
  • Formulating Research Questions
  • Ways to Formulate a Research Problem
  • Evidence-Based Practice Questions
  • Criteria for Well-Formed Questions
  • Establishing Validity and Reliability
  • Summary
• Chapter 4: Completing a Literature Search
  • Purposes of a Literature Search
  • Planning and Conducting a Search
  • Organizing and Documenting Your Literature Search
  • Summary
  • Appendix: Electronic Literature Search
• Chapter 5: Nonexperimental Research Design
  • Nonexperimental Research Designs
  • Qualitative Research
  • Scientific Rigor in Qualitative Research
  • Summary
• Chapter 6: Experimental Research and Levels of Evidence
  • Experimental Research Designs
  • Quasi-Experimental Approaches
  • Single Subject Designs
  • Experimental Designs and Levels of Evidence
  • Summary
• Chapter 7: Research Participants and Sampling
  • Populations and Samples
  • Sample Characteristics
  • Sampling Methods
  • Random Assignment
  • Sample Size
  • Summary
• Chapter 8: Data Analysis: Describing Different Types of Data
  • Levels of Measurement
  • Visual Representation of Data
  • Descriptive Statistics
  • Shapes of Distributions
  • Summary
• Chapter 9: Data Analysis: Inferential Statistics
  • Inferential Statistics
  • Measures of Association
  • Testing for Differences between Two Samples
  • Testing for Differences among Three or More Samples
  • Statistical Analysis for Factorial Designs
  • Summary
• Chapter 10: Research Outcomes: Clinical Guidance, Research Reports
  • Knowledge Base for Evaluating Clinical Research
  • Reporting Research Findings
  • Summary
• Index

About The Author

Lauren Nelson, Ph.D.

Lauren K. Nelson, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Since coming to UNI in 1990, she has regularly taught courses in phonetics, articulation and phonological disorders, research methods, and augmentative communication. Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Michigan University and a Master of Arts from Central Michigan University. After working for two years in an Iowa area education agency, she returned to school and completed her Ph.D. studies at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis).

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