This rewritten, expanded and updated 8th edition of the long-running bestseller Research Methods in Education is the most comprehensive and accessible introductory text in the field. Thoroughly updated with nine new chapters, this new edition offers rich practical advice underpinned by clear, theoretical foundations.

PART 1: The context of educational research 1 The nature of enquiry: setting the field; 2 Mixed methods research; 3 Critical educational research; 4 Theory in educational research; 5 Evaluation and research; 6 The search for causation PART 2: Research design 7 The ethics of educational and social research; 8 Ethics in Internet research; 9 Choosing a research project; 10 Research questions; 11 Research design and planning; 12 Sampling; 13 Sensitive educational research; 14 Validity and reliability PART 3: Methodologies for Educational Research 15 Qualitative, naturalistic and ethnographic research; 16 Historical and documentary research, Jane Martin; 17 Surveys, longitudinal, cross-sectional and trend studies; 18 Internet surveys; 19 Case studies; 20 Experiments; 21 Meta-analysis, systematic reviews and research syntheses, Harsh Suri; 22 Action research; 23 Virtual worlds, social network software and netography in educational research, Stewart Martin PART 4: Methods of Data Collection 24 Questionnaires; 25 Interviews; 26 Observation; 27 Tests; 28 Using secondary data in educational research; 29 Personal constructs, Richard Bell; 30 Role play and research, Carmel O'Sullivan; 31 Visual media in educational research PART 5: Data Analysis and Reporting 32 Approaches to qualitative data analysis; 33 Organizing and presenting qualitative data; 34 Coding and content analysis; 35 Discourses: conversations, narratives and autobiographies as texts; 36 Analyzing visual media; 37 Grounded theory; 39 Statistical significance, effect size and statistical power; 40 Descriptive statistics; 41 Inferential statistics: difference tests; 42 Inferential statistics: Regression analysis and standardization; 43 Factor analysis, cluster analysis and structural equation modelling; 44 Choosing a statistical test; 45 Beyond mixed methods: using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to integrate cross-case and within-case analyses, Barry Cooper and Judith Glaesser