This work brings together the accumulated wisdom of some of Britain's leading criminologists, together with the fresh experiences of a new generation of scholars. The result is a criminologist's guide to the real problems and issues of conducting research and framing a research project in the field of criminology and criminal justice. It is a common place criticism of the criminological and criminal justice research literature along with other research literatures in the social sciences that published accounts of methodology conceal or gloss over issues which can be exceedingly problematic for researchers in the field. Moreover, few methodology textbooks give any serious attention to the problems which novice researchers will encounter when translating neat and tidy textbook methodologies into the always contingent and often compromising world of field work practice.