<p>A masterfully written text making complex issues approachable and very workable! Robson’s personable style as if engaged in a conversation with the reader entices and enlightens. It is rare to find a text that to such an extent combines user-friendliness and an engaging style without compromising scientific stringency, ethics or practical usefulness and common sense. This is indeed a treasure trove for students and professionals of any kind and everywhere whose study or work involves people in groups and organisations in need of development, change or just a healthy reality check on how their organisation is doing.</p>
- Roland S Persson,
This is a marvelous book. It communicates clearly and directly to the reader, making the subject accessible and usable rather than abstruse or forbidding. Robson excels in thinking with the reader and getting the reader to think along with him, so that reading his work seems like collaborating with a helpful mentor. Supported by many helpful diagrams and charts, he uses real-world situations, contexts, examples, and research literature to give the reader an understanding of how she might go about conducting actual research using this book as a guide. He discusses the challenges a researcher can face in conducting evaluations, such as getting those being studied to collaborate in the research project, and the strengths and weaknesses, benefits and pitfalls of so doing. And it is of great value that his focus is specifically on small-scale evaluation, because that is the type of evaluation in which a student or budding researcher is most likely to be involved. Robson is a great demystifier and guide--other research texts would benefit greatly from adopting Robson′s style of thinking, writing, and guiding.<br />
- Jeremy J. Shapiro,