The planning of educational research is not an arbitrary matter; the research itself is an inescapably ethical enterprise. We place ethical issues at a very early point in the book to signal this. The research community and those using the findings have a right to expect that research is conducted rigorously, scrupulously and in an ethically defensible manner. All this necessitates careful planning, and this part introduces some key planning issues. Part 2 contains an entirely new chapter on how to choose a research project and a full set of considerations in the planning of educational research. In designing research, we need to consider the issues of how to choose a research project, how to plan it, how to conduct a literature search and review, and how to ensure that the project is practicable. This chapter suggests several ways in which researchers can approach the choice of a research project, and comments on the need for the project to be significant, to consider its purposes and intended outcomes, feasibility, research questions, literature review and overall design.
Further, this part amplifies earlier editions that addressed sampling, including here sampling in mixed methods research, particularly non-probability samples. Further, sampling, reliability and validity are key matters in research – without due attention to these the research could turn out to be worthless. Hence this part addresses these issues in detail. These are complex matters, and we take readers through them systematically. The chapter on sensitive educational research is included here, to underline the point that not only is the very decision to conduct research a sensitive matter, but that often access itself is difficult and sensitive, and this could be the major issue to be faced in planning research. This part sets out a range of planning possibilities so that the eventual selection of sampling procedures, together with decisions on reliability and validity, are made on the basis of fitness for purpose, and so that sensitivities in research are anticipated and addressed.