Research, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2015.1068188 ... The author is an experienced supervisor of Masters students and has taught in ...
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Annals of Leisure Research, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2015.1068188
BOOK REVIEW: Researching tourism, leisure and hospitality for your dissertation
Trudie Walters By Peter Mason, Oxford, UK, Goodfellow Publishers Ltd, 2014, 302 pp., ₤29.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-908999-91-7
Researching Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality for Your Dissertation is aimed at students embarking on research for their Masters degree, and is an easy to read, user-friendly text that provides a series of case studies from the tourism, leisure and hospitality fields to effectively illustrate the points made. The author is an experienced supervisor of Masters students and has taught in universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The book is divided into nine chapters that mirror the most common structure of a dissertation. Each chapter concludes with a section titled ‘Writing this chapter in your dissertation’ providing practical advice and is followed by some activities for the student to work through.
The introduction discusses a variety of reasons for research and its value, ensuring students are aware that research does have relevance to their future careers in the field of tourism, leisure and hospitality and that it is more than just a necessary requirement of their Masters programme. After a discussion of the differences between natural science and social science, there is a very valuable section detailing self-awareness which should be compulsory reading for all prospective Masters students. It includes prompts for them to consider how they cope with things such as stress, how they understand ‘research’ and the specifics of a dissertation. For programmes that do not have a Memorandum of Understanding between supervisor and students, there is a good exercise for students about the role of the supervisor – plus what the supervisor expects of them in return.
The second chapter provides a good rationale for the literature review, especially that it should be referred back to in the findings/discussion chapters. However, the frequent references to terms such as positivism, qualitative research and phenomenology that are unexplained (the student is told that they will be addressed in Chapter 3) is somewhat irritating and could have been avoided. A case study illustrates very well how to decide which literature is relevant, and the section that deals with how to take notes while reading the literature is also clear and easy to understand. A discussion of how to
select and refine your topic follows, and while well written with very valuable advice for avoiding the main pitfalls of developing a research topic, it seems out of place here and would have been more appropriately discussed in the introductory chapter.
Research philosophy and design are covered in Chapter 3, and it is the first part of this chapter that is perhaps the weak spot in the book. While paradigms, ontology, epistemology and methodology are somewhat difficult concepts to understand and may need simplifying for students who have not encountered them before, the structure of the chapter along with inconsistencies in the use of key terms mean it is confusing to read in places. For example, it begins with a section titled ‘qualitative and quantitative paradigms’ but then goes on to discuss them elsewhere as ‘research approaches’. Likewise positivist and phenomenological paradigms are also referred to as research approaches. However, in defence of the author, the differences between positivist and phenomenological paradigms are well illustrated using a case study. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to discussing the types of research, and the major means of gathering data (such as questionnaire surveys and case studies) plus their limitations. The chapter is rounded off with a discussion of the importance of validity, reliability and ethics.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on quantitative and qualitative research techniques and conduct respectively. An in-depth discussion of how to design and administer a questionnaire survey is given in the former, and observation and interviews are covered in equal depth in the latter. Both chapters are easy to read and understand, and many real-life examples of research surveys and interview schedules are given which students should find useful to guide their own research. Each chapter concludes with a section that provides valuable advice on how to structure the writing of the methods chapter itself.
The presentation of results in both quantitative and qualitative studies is explained in Chapter 6, and the analysis of data is covered in Chapters 7 and 8. Unfortunately these chapters are (perhaps by necessity) generic and seem a little disjointed, particularly for a dissertation based on a qualitative approach where the results and discussion chapters are frequently (and logically) combined into a single chapter entitled ‘Findings and Discussion’. However, the principles remain the same regardless of the structure of the final dissertation, and the use of examples to demonstrate the fundamentals of analysis will be a very useful starting point for students.
In summary, this text should prove useful to students as they undergo their Masters research project in tourism, leisure and hospitality and write their dissertation, with its step by step approach and case studies. It may not be applicable to every student in every situation in every country, but it certainly covers the basics and provides a solid foundation upon which to build. There is a list of references and (somewhat limited) examples of useful websites at the back of the book. However, a list of resources
under subheadings (such as research methods, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, statistical analysis, handbooks for research, interview techniques and so on) may have been more practical from a student’s point of view. For supervisors of Masters students, the introductory chapter may be singularly useful – it is available to download from the publisher’s website (all chapters are available individually at a low cost). If students read the chapter and complete the activities at the end, they will have a clearer idea of their expectations (of the supervisor and of themselves), the writing process and how they write and this should provide some good points for discussion during supervisory meetings in the initial stages of the research project.
