This book advances a framework, a process, and compositional approaches for designing a proposal for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research in the human and social sciences. The ascendency of qualitative research, the emergence of mixed methods approaches, and the continuing use of the traditional forms of quantitative design have created a need for this book's unique comparison of the three approaches to inquiry. This comparison begins with preliminary consideration of philosophical assumptions for all three approaches, a review of the literature, an assessment of the use of theory in research approaches, and reflections about the importance of writing and ethics in scholarly inquiry. The book then address the key elements of the process of research: writing an introduction, stating a purpose for the study, identifying research questions and hypotheses, and advancing methods and procedures for data collection and analysis. At each step in this process, the reader is taken through qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches.