Book review: Tips and Techniques in Writing Research by Emerlita G. Magsajo-Sarno, 2010.

Book review:
Tips and Techniques in Writing Research by Emerlita G. Magsajo-Sarno, 2010.
by Melchor F. Cichon
Dec 11, 2013

One late afternoon, two female students approached me. They wanted to know if there is a book by a certain Joven that provides information on how to come up with the right sample size for their thesis on the taxi drivers in Iloilo City that serve as tourist guides. Since I could not recall of any book on statistics by Joven, I went to our Open Access Catalog (OPAC) to check if we have a book by that author. There was none. The students were disappointed. I suggested that they use other research books, but they were not amenable.

Two days after, a friend of mine told me to see the book by Emerlita G. Magsanjo-Sarno entitled Tips and Techniques in Writing Research published by Rex Book Store, 2010. I browsed the book, and I saw Slovin's formula on page 61. This is the formula earlier needed by the two students. This particular book does not only mention the formula, but it also provides a step by step procedure in computing the size of a sample.

This is just one of the best features of this book.

The author of this book is a professor at the University of Asia and the Pacific. A PhD graduate of the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 1980, Dr. Emerlita G. Magsajo-Sarno she used to be the Dean of Pasig Catholic College.

As the title says, this book really provides valuable tips in conducting any social and humanities research.

This book is divided into five parts. Part I talks about the nature of research and its importance. It also introduces the different kinds of research, its classification and types. Lastly, this part of the book gives us the techniques that one can use in research.

Part II provides a short discussion on the basics of research with a flow chart to help the reader on how to conduct a research. It presents the research process , the research problem, and the steps in preparing a working bibliography. It gives examples on how to use the APA style, the Modern Language Association of America Style (MLA), and Turabian and Chicago styles in preparing citation.

Part III provides the Parts of a Research Paper where the chapters of the research paper are being discussed in details. This is where research methodology is discussed with ample examples.

Part IV shows several sampling methods with equation. For me, this chapter of the book is the most important part of it. It provides statistical tools that could be used particularly when one is conducting quantitative researches.

Part V present the preliminary and of the reference part of the research paper. It is here where sample abstract, title page, table of contents, list of tables, and acknowledgement are presented.

Part VI discusses where the reference material are presented, and the appendix, and other articles appropriate for the back part of the paper. 

In addition to the above contents, this book provides skeletal parts of a research paper. Not only that, it also has a list of references, a glossary, and an index.

The only negative part of this book is its index and its bibliography . Although the index is multi-layer, it is not comprehensive. Important term like Slovin's formula could have been included in the index, and its list of references are rather old. Although the book was copyrighted in 2010, it only has one citation in 2004. The rest were written in 2000 and below.

Over-all, I can say that this book is a one-stop reference material and should be in libraries of higher learning not only because it is easy to understand, but it also gives ample examples in all aspects of the research process, thus simplifying a research process in social sciences and the humanities, from the moment of conception to the moment of binding the research paper.