Article Outline

• Copyright

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book which is unique, in that it attempts to provide a beginning text for both nursing and midwifery students. This is particularly important for Bachelor of Midwifery students, who ordinarily have little or no prior exposure to nursing, but who nonetheless generally attend research lectures with nursing students.

The text is well presented and clearly laid out in three sections. The first section aims at promoting research awareness, the second section at understanding and accessing literature and the third section offers an integrated overview of the research process.

The first chapter talks of the history of research and its significance and this chapter is very nursing orientated. Chapter 2 gives a very good overview of research theory, epistemology and ontology but at a level that is probably better suited to the postgraduate student rather than undergraduate. Chapters 3 and 4 are particularly fine and deal rather well with appraisal of the literature. These chapters offer clear concise information pertaining to types of literature and how, when and why to conduct a literature search. The literature review is similarly overviewed together with its purpose. Strategies are then offered to assist the beginning research student to appraise the quality of reviews.

Chapters 7–12 overview the research process, different methodologies, analytic processes and sampling procedures. They give clear indication of research questions best answered by the different methods. All the discussion is well supported by nursing and midwifery examples and diagrams. It is worth noting that the midwifery examples are quite central in this text, which is in contrast to the more usual add on to a nursing text. Finally, the learning activities, questions and tutorial suggestions at each chapter's end are very helpful.

My impression was of a well thought out and clear text and I will be recommending it for Bachelor of Midwifery students.