Homelessness is a major problem in many global cities, and research on the issue recognizes that urban aspect. But homelessness is not just a problem for cities, as criminologist Michael Young describes in this Methods in Action interview. Young describes his experiences conducting this research, details some of the nuts and bolts of his mixed methods approach, and explains how geography mediates culture in ways that wise researchers need to understand.

With the arrival of the revamped MethodSpace, some users have been reporting various issues with accessing their accounts or having their favorite group's activity show up. We're actively working on addressing these issues. To make sure we don't overlook something that's affecting your experience, and to help us locate where problems that aren't affecting everyone can be pinpointed, feel free to contact the community manager at this email: michael.todd@sagepub.com.

MethodSpace’s inaugural webinar ‘Methods in Action: Tackling the Tweet’ took place on April 13th with researchers Luke Sloan and Joshua Tucker. They explained how to conduct Twitter-based research projects while detailing some of the fascinating findings from their labs' social media research. The archived webinar and answers to some of the questions that couldn't be answered in the hour appear here.

As you can see, MethodSpace has changed. Connecting the research community since 2007, we’ve outgrown our former platform and have moved to WordPress, which in addition to better serve our members allows us to take the opportunity to offer new features and improve old ones. But perhaps you have questions about this transition (and what it means to members) ...

Social media opens new doors in social and behavioral science research methods, but like all research, nothing is a given, In this interview, Torgeir Aleti explains his group's efforts to use Twitter to learn more about young Australians’ drinking habits, and the hard lessons they drew from the experience while trying to preserve the integrity, both design and ethical, of their research.

This article drawn from a paper in the American Journal of Evaluation presents the principles and findings of a new Participatory Assessment of Development (PADev) evaluation approach co-designed with Dutch nongovernmental organizations and Northern and African research institutes in the context of rural development in Ghana and Burkina Faso.