Insufficient attention to collecting data is often to blame when a research project founders. So how can we avoid, at best, redoing the research and at worst, scrapping the project due to a lack of sufficient data? Data collection is the foundation of high quality research, but it is often given less attention than later steps in a research project, such as coding and analyzing data.

The first step in implementing a research design is collecting the data. You first have to take care to gather appropriate types of and amount of data, because making adjustments later in the project can be prohibitive. This major work focuses on this neglected aspect of the research process. It is divided into five main sections that correspond to the broad types of research design and their associated sampling methods. The five categories of research design used to organize the selection are:
1. Surveys
2. Interviews
3. Experiments
4. Observations, including ethnographic
5. Archival and public sources of data

In each of the five sections, quantitative, and qualitative data collection is discussed because each of these design types can be used to collect either or both types of data.