This two-credit course will be offered over two weekends in Spring 2011 semester. The course intends to help students learn to designing and implement applied research projects using most popular tools of data collection and analysis. Applied research is used to clarify and confront actual policy, programmatic, and organizational problems, whereas scientific research aims to advance universal knowledge. The first part of the course will focus on research designs, specifically on case studies using mixed (quantitative and qualitative) methods. The second part will focus on data collection tools. The participants will learn to design and conduct different forms of interviews, surveys, and focus groups. For the final deliverable students will design and implement an applied research project using a combination of at least two data collection tools.