Advising on research methods: A consultant's companion by Herman Adèr, Gideon Mellenbergh and David Hand is a handbook for those who are giving advice on research methods in the social and behavioral sciences, including medicine and epidemiology.

It takes the perspective of a statistical advisor who wants to assist researchers to produce better – more accurate, valid, and reliable – results. The book is explicitly intended to be used for instruction. Each chapter has an Exercise section, while the chapter texts are interspersed with ‘Topics for classroom discussion’.

As to the contents: the book follows the research cycle. It starts from general considerations on research quality and publishing, then discusses different design strategies, the choice and construction of measurement instruments and the data analysis process including the interpretation of the analysis results. The first imprint of the book has been indexed for Google books This makes it possible to have a good look at the contents before buying it:

Typos. In the third edition which appeared in the beginning of 2011, several typos have been corrected. The harmful ones are listed here.

Reviews. A positive review by Peter Wludyka, (University of North Florida; I am fond of the book's opening sentence reminding the reader that a consultant should be ``available, affable, and able'' in decreasing order of importance. and, The authors have produced a useful book that someone in the early stages of a consulting career should find especially helpful and easy to use) has appeared in the Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials section of the November 2009 issue of The American Statistician. It can be found here.

Another very favorable review by Yves Laberge (Laval University, Canada; Advising on research methods is one of the most impressive books on methodology I have read in recent years. and Herman Adèr, Don Mellenbergh and David Hand have made a tremendous job…), appeared in the Febuary 2011 issue of the Journal of Applied Statistics. The review can be studied here.

Herman Adèr

has been a statistical consultant for many years, both at the department of Psychology and the department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Free University, Amsterdam. With Gideon J. Mellenbergh, he has been the editor of the book ‘Research Methodology’ (Sage, 1999) in which the theoretical foundations of general methodology were explored.

Gideon J. Mellenbergh

is emeritus professor of Psychological Methods at the Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam. He has a long-standing experience in methodological consultancy in different fields, such as clinical and health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, educational research, social dentistry, and psychiatry.

David J. Hand

is Professor of Statistics at Imperial College, London, UK. He has wide-ranging consultancy experience to organizations ranging from banks, through pharmaceutical companies, to governments. He has published fifteen books, and is the founding editor and continuing editor-in-chief of the journal of Statistics and Computing.

Each year, Herman Adèr and Gideon Mellenbergh give several courses using the book as material. One of these is a six week research masters’ course at the department of Psychological Methods of the University of Amsterdam. It usually starts at end of October and lasts until the end of the year.

Johannes van Kessel also offers in-house courses to governmental and non-governmental institutions. For more information on these courses, see: ARMCourses.

A colloquium on Methodological Advising was held in Amsterdam in 2007. It was funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and organized by Adèr and Mellenbergh.
Proceedings of this colloquium were published in 2009. The book contains newly written articles on the same themes as were presented during the colloquium. See: 2007 KNAW Proceedings