Communication Research: Asking Questions, Finding Answers covers basic research issues and both quantitative and qualitative approaches to communication research. The text helps students become better consumers of communication research literature by emphasizing effective methods for finding, consuming, and analyzing communication research. Covering the entire research process--how one conceptualizes a research idea, turns it into an interesting and researchable question, selects a methodology, conducts the study, and writes up the study's findings--provides a path for students who wish to develop and conduct research projects.
"Communication Research" is useful tool for understanding the research process. It splits research methods into two basic types: quantitative and qualitative, and discusses the differences and similarities of both. Much space is also devoted to statistical methodology.
The book does not do much to cover the foundational theories in the communications field. It can be repetitive and overly wordy at times. Understanding the overall process can be confusing because some chapters describe both qualitative and quantitative approaches, while other sections place the two approaches into separate chapters.
It is definitely worth the time and effort if you want to learn how professional research is conducted.
This is already an incredibly dull subject but somehow the book found a way to make it even duller than I imagined it ever could be. It somehow makes simple things seem complicated. So not worth the amount the time and money I spent.
Required reading for a class. I don't think I've ever read a book that used some form of the word "communicate" on seven out of eight lines of text in a row. That eighth line was the end of a parenthetical citation, so it really shouldn't count. Ha.
Dry subject. Starts out as a dry reading. Not interested in the subject, but it's required for my program.