For many, the words 'research methods' prompts horror or yawns.  I have been teaching research methods in one form or another since i was a Teaching Assistant at the University of British Columbia in the mid-1990s.  The more i teach it the more i learn myself.  And there is
no doubt that it has made my own work more rigorous, bringing greater internal and external validity to what i have designed.

Research methods are not necessarily obscure either.  When working with the Scottish Executive's Rural Voices: Action Research Competition i designed and delivered basic training in the methods necessary for the community consultations and other research they needed to do in order to further their community project.  And all did a sterling job with it, despite not being academics! As a result Integrate offers training to communities in a range of basic qualitative research methods, suited to their own priorities.

In my academic writing i have been forced to develop and use innovative research methods such as auto-ethnography, the Case-Study of Self (with Dr. Alex Franklin) and Digital Ethnography (the use of digital data recording tools and subsequent digital analysis of data).  Further, i am a strong advocate of the Case Study Method developed by Robert K Yin in the mid 1990s.  Too many people still use Case Studies without making a formal methodological justification for doing so.