Characteristics of applied social research. Planning applied research: Specifying research questions, writing research proposals. Applied research designs and their strengths and limitations: Randomised and quasi-experiments, surveys, case studies, field research & qualitative research designs. Issues in data collection: choice of method, considerations of time and cost, consultation with stakeholders, operationalisation of concepts including social measurement and scale construction. Analysis of applied research data: qualitative and quantitative techniques including qualitative data analysis, analysis of variance, correlation, multiple regression analysis, analysis of contingency tables. Use of SPSS for data analysis. Reporting and interpreting research outcomes. Ethical issues and utilisation of research findings.