I got less than I expected when I paid almost full price for this book. Yes, it is very usable, but not excellent condition. The book arrived with little or no packing material and was not in a sealed envelope. The next time I need to buy a textbook, I will be wary about getting a used one from this seller.

I wish the author realizes not everything must be put in the form of an analogy! Apart from that the book is a good review of how to go about a research paper, giving valuable advice on how to avoid pitfalls. As somebody mentioned, the Computer Prompts really are very basic.

Research, it is safe to say, is probably not the average person's favorite course to take in school. The subject itself, for most, is bland and boring and probably not very accessible from a learning standpoint.

Enter Leedy and Omrod. "Practical Research" is just an outstanding book to learn research from or to teach a research course with. First off, the book is small and it is written in simple language with "practical" examples. This makes the subject a lot more accessible to the average reader. Second, it contains lots of helpful hints and checklists to help make the learning process easier. The companion website for this book contains practice tests that the students can use to gauge their learning (as well as e-mail results to get feedback from the instructor).

Though the book is short, it is still very thorough and to the point. There is no tradeoff in quality of information for brevity which is a great point in favor of this book. Overall, this book is a superior learning tool because it communicates the research process very clearly. A student at any level, be it, middle school, secondary school, undergraduate or graduate, can easily learn the research process from this text.

We used this as one of the texts for a graduate level research methods course I took and it was a big hit with all enrolled in the class.

Here's a quick rundown of the books topics:

1.What is Research?

2.Research Tools

3.Identifying the research problem

4.Literature Review

5.Research design planning

6.Research proposal writing

7.Qualitative research

8.Historical research

9.Descriptive research

10.Experimental and Causal-Comparative designs

11.Statistical techniques for quantitative data analysis

12.Writing and publishing the research report

Overall, "Practical Research" is a great learning solution whether you are independently trying to learn research methods or if you are an instructor looking for a great textbook for your class.

Highly Recommended