Introduction: Sampling is an important phase in RESEARCH, which directly influences on applicability and generalizability of findings. Therefore, it is critical in RESEARCH process. Purpose: The purpose of this review was to assess sampling methods in published articles at the first 3 issues of the Journal of "Nursing RESEARCH" in 2004. Materials and Methods: A checklist was first made by reviewing literature and all articles in the issues were chosen. A critical appraisal of literature review, methods, results and discussion of the articles was performed by the checklist. SPSS package was used for data analysis. Results: Findings showed that samples in most studies were healthy people. Published articles explained about the target population, accessible population, the number of subjects and their features. However, a systematic bias was observed in all studied studies. Conclusion: Most authors did not describe the sampling method of their studies completely. This may make the critical review of sampling design, duplication of study and future meta-analysis hard. In addition, sample representativeness, sampling errors and systematic bias cannot be thoroughly evaluated. In most articles, authors referred to limitations resulted from failure in sampling design, which may restrict generalization.

Ethnography as a scientific RESEARCH method in human sciences with active participation of RESEARCHer in the field RESEARCH aims to develop scientific knowledge of groups and cultures. Direct observation in natural sitting and evaluation of data in the context caused holistic view with high validity of ethnography RESEARCH.The theoretical foundation of ethnography insists on culture based on holistic view and follows thick description through in-depth studies. This article argues theoretical foundation, methodological assumptions, RESEARCH process and ultimately those positive and negative points in ethnography RESEARCH.

Qualitative RESEARCH offers opportunities to expand the scope of psychological inquiry to regions not amenable to quantification, but also raises particular challenges to evaluation criteria such as RESEARCH validity. Qualitative RESEARCHers reject the criteria used by QUANTITATIVE RESEARCHers when evaluating their work. Those criteria include validity, reliability and generalisability.This article includes a consideration of the notion of 'approach' and its impact on the subject matter of science. It also entails reframing the notions of validity, reliability, and generalizability to match qualitative RESEARCH evaluation purposes. As it seems, the integrity of the qualitative RESEARCH process and the quality of the end product require evaluation criteria of quite a different order.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH is the application of QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH techniques to the field of management. QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH is a formal, objective, systematic process in which numerical data are used to obtain information about the world. This RESEARCH method is used to describe variables, examine relationships among variables and determine cause-effect interactions between variables. Numbers, anything that is measurable, Statistics, tables and graphs, are used to present the results of these methods of RESEARCH. The goal of this paper is to provide readers with an introduction to different types of RESEARCH methods including QUANTITATIVE and qualitative approaches.

Analysis of political science RESEARCH in Iran, shows that most RESEARCHer use descriptive approach in their articles, then contextual analysis with QUANTITATIVE-statistical methods. There are different reasons for this, including: Lack of necessary information and data,difficulty of applying these methods,in political issues,weakness of these methods in the curriculum,and et. al. All of these, have led us to conclude that: political RESEARCH should be analyzed in term of their RESEARCH method. The author hypothesis is that: despite the increase in “, field studies”,and welcoming this kind of RESEARCH by academic journals,we don’, t see enough motivations in “, field studies”,in political science. In this paper, the author, by analyzing selected journals, test this hypothesis and finally, offers suggestions for improving the status of political studies in Iran.