This bestselling book provides an accessible introduction to the theoretical concepts and descriptive and analytic research methods used in research on health and health services. The third edition has been thoroughly revised throughout to include updated references and boxed examples, with additional information on key methodological developments, among them: Complex interventions Mixed research methods Psychometrics Secondary data analysis Systematic reviews Pertinent social science concepts The research methods described cover the assessment of health needs, morbidity and mortality trends and rates, costing health services, sampling for survey research, cross-sectional and longitudinal survey design, experimental methods and techniques of group assignment, questionnaire design, interviewing techniques, coding and analysis of quantitative data, methods and analysis of qualitative observational studies, and types of unstructured interviewing.The book is grounded in the author's career as a researcher on health and health service issues, and the valuable experience this has provided in meeting the challenges of research on people and organisations in real life settings.