1. Scientific character of Social Science and its differences with the Natural Sciences. What makes the social sciences can be considered as such science?
2. Determination of the basic objectives of the research: what is the problem to be solved, the (s) decide (s) to adopt.
3. Prior knowledge search, detection and treatment of secondary sources.
4. Identification of information needs: What data is needed, what to learn to make decisions based enough.
5. Determination of indicators: how to measure what we want to find out.
6. Determination of the subjects (targets, target audiences) to whom they should consult.
7. Criteria for identifying research tools, from the theoretical point of view and from the practical point of view (how is it easier to ask to diferent audiences)
8. Determination of sample sizes and their distributions: how to obtain an optimal representation of the whole and the main potential diversity (socio - demographic, territorial, functional, attitudinal ...)
9. To create tools for gathering information: patterns of development of questionnaires and interview guidelines or group discussion.
10. Field work: instructions to interviewers, selection of sampling points, collection and call for discussion groups. Monitoring and debugging processes and their interaction, reaching the sample and its distribution, analysis of reliability and consistency of the information collected.
11. Encoding and burning.
12. Tabulation of results: the analysis plan.
13. Analysis and interpretation of results, reading tables, process of identifying relevant information, process a report.
14. Drawing conclusions and its translation into specific suggestions or decisions.