Social Work students often find research an intimidating and complex area of study, with many struggling to understand the core concepts and their application to practice. This book presents these concepts in an accessible and user-friendly way. Key skills and methods such as literature reviews, interviews, and questionnaires are explored in detail while the underlying ethical reasons for doing good research underpin the text. For this second edition, new material on ethnography is added.

Introduction
Planning your research
Undertaking a literature review
Interviews
Focus groups
Questionnaires
Documentary analysis
Analysing your data
Writing up your dissertation
Conclusion
Glossary
References
Index

Andrew Whittaker, PhD, is Professor of Social Work Research at London South Bank University, England, where he is head of the Risk Resilience and Expert Decision Making (RRED) research group. His research on risk and decision making has ranged from ethnographic to randomised controlled trial research designs. Andrew recently completed a review of professional decision making for a child death inquiry in Queensland, Australia. He is the Convenor of the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG) of the European Social Work Research Association. DARSIG is the main European network for researchers in the field of assessment, risk and decision making in social work, with more than 80 members in over 20 countries. Andrew is Editor of the Journal of Social Work Practice.