This is a book aimed at helping those educating and preparing for practice in health and social work (through qualifying and post-qualifying courses) to appraise and use social research. It seeks through this to help create ‘research mindedness’ in practitioners. This fits very much with the concerns that practice be ‘evidence based’ or ‘knowledge based’. In order to do this we need to look at the processes by which practitioners may incorporate findings into their work, as well as the nature of those findings. In relation to the latter, this requires them to understand something about how research is conducted, and how these reflect different approaches and beliefs about knowledge and the social world. In all these respects, the book aims to help develop informed practitioners who feel comfortable with using findings in the knowledge that they understand the nature and limitations of research.