Research, Evaluation and Audit: Key Steps in Demonstrating Your Value

You could call this a book on research methods, and it would satisfy a reader seeking only that. Imaginatively, though, the editors have targeted a wider audience in the knowledge that many practitioners use quantitative and qualitative methods for evaluation and audit, yet often have no experience and no guide to how it should be done. To emphasise that point, only a relatively few of the authors work as teaching faculty in library and information science (LIS) schools, and the majority of contributors come from practice.

In the first part are five chapters about getting started. The first chapter is a necessary one for this book because in it the editors define research, evaluation and audit. It gives simple suggestions for identifying the factors that will help decide on the best approach for a project. No matter which method is chosen though, the editors make it clear that all the different approaches will add to the evidence base for library and information services, and most such projects produce results that are worthy of dissemination. That alone is an excellent justification for this book. This section also includes a chapter on asking the right question, a point that has an importance that most proto-researchers do not appreciate, for experience teaches us that asking the right question often results in a solid investigation, whereas a vague question leads to problems down the line. This section also offers advice on writing the project plan and on dealing with ethical issues in research.

The central section covers the topics that many beginners will believe is all they need to know, i.e. how to gather data and then analyse it. This section starts with a chapter on the literature review, necessary for all investigations even if they are not intended for academic purposes. This point is often missed by practitioners, so it is good to see it emphasised here. The chapter on qualitative methods by Alison Pickard is excellent, as one would expect from the author. In addition to the familiar methods of interviews and focus groups, she adds observation, participant diaries, ethnography and Delphi study. The quantitative method’s chapter by Christine Urquart covers the essential territory in a way that beginners can understand. The most difficult task of all, that of writing a single chapter about data analysis, has fallen to Craven and Griffiths. Bearing in mind that this has to cover both qualitative and quantitative, it is a very difficult task, and naturally it is possible to find holes in what they covered. Personally, I was surprised that analysis of variance gets a mention when it is likely to scare off most readers, but the much more common (and I would argue, more useful) chi-square and t-test have been omitted.

The final part of the book covers aspects of research all too often overlooked: the closing stages of writing and dissemination, and probably most important of all, how to convert the findings into practice. It is a fitting conclusion to a book that works through every step of the process. I doubt that it will replace conventional research method’s texts in LIS schools, one of the best being Pickard’s Research Methods in Information (2nd ed. Facet, 2013), but it might just reach the practitioners who need much better awareness and guidance on how to conduct research, evaluation and audit.