Ian MacFarlane, Patricia McCarthy Veach, Bonnie S. LeRoy: Genetic counseling research: a practical guide

Abstract

data. Guidance on dealing with missing data is particularly good, emphasising the importance of preserving and using incomplete data where this is practical, and providing guidance on how to do this. A great flowchart is provided on page 171 that can be used as a guide to selecting appropriate statistical tests. My main gripe with this book is that the balance of coverage was tipped very much in favour of quantitative rather than qualitative research. Two chapters (86 pages) are devoted to quantitative research but only one chapter (27 pages) to qualitative research. This may be a reflection of the expertise of the authors, but in my experience, qualitative research can be attractive to genetic counsellors in training. One reason for this is that the skills of a good research interviewer overlap with the skills of a good counsellor (unconditional positive regard, open questions, active listening, attending to non-verbal cues, use of silence), although students do need to be careful in research interviews that they check understanding by asking more open questions, and not by reflecting back. Another reason is that student genetic counsellors love to talk to patients and hear their stories. It is also true that many areas of genetic counselling practice are not well-understood, and exploratory qualitative research can be more appropriate than quantitative research. Many rather advanced quantitative approaches and methods are described in Chapter 7 e.g. multivariate analysis of variance, multilevel linear modelling and structural equation modelling. I found the explanation of exploratory factor analysis a bit unclear because its application was not described. In my opinion, these methods are rather advanced for MSc. in Genetic Counselling students. Yet, no description is provided of the many different approaches in qualitative research [e.g. thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), discourse analysis (Hodges This excellent book provides a great introduction for genetic counsellors embarking on research for the first time, and is a very suitable textbook for MSc. in Genetic Counselling students conducting MSc. dissertation projects. I found this book to have a very practical orientation, with lots of useful tips for novice researchers, and have already recommended it to my genetic counselling students. The authors supply great worksheets and checklists to help novices who may be, for example, conducting a literature review for the first time. They also provide urls for useful web-based resources. The first few chapters cover the early stages in any research project including developing research questions, finding sources of literature, with plenty of practical tips about how to keep track of your work. Very useful guidance on critical appraisal is provided, with easy-to-use worksheets on what data to “extract” from reviewed research papers. The chapter on “Ethics in Research” focuses on the US context, and research governance arrangements may be quite different in other countries. For example, in the UK, there is no exemption from the need for ethical approval for research on human subjects, although the arrangements differ for research participants recruited through the National Health Service and participants recruited in other ways. However, the ethical principles underlying research governance arrangements are substantially similar, and these are well-described in this book. Quantitative research is well-covered, with very useful guidance on sampling, and on managing and cleaning