This best-selling text provides a scheme which enables the beginning researcher to organize and evaluate the research that they read and to plan and implement small scale research projects of their own. The authors also give structured, practical guidance on the development of a research question, techniques of data collection, qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis, and the writing and dissemination of research. Andrew Brown and Paul Dowling have been active researchers in educational studies for nearly twenty years. They have also supervised numerous doctoral and masters dissertations and taught research methods programmes in various higher education institutions around the world as well as in the Institute of Education University of London.