ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an exegesis of some of the existing key research on school choice. It proceeds to call for greater precision in survey design, a more sophisticated analysis of data and rigour in the interpretation of results in this field of research. The chapter considers a range of methods common in choice research in the UK, in terms of their sampling strategies, instruments and techniques of analysis. It offers examples of recent published work to illustrate the practical problems and pitfalls. There are currently thought to be two common approaches to the study of school choice, loosely based upon the two methodological paradigms, often referred to as quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative or “shopping list” approach to school choice research has been criticised by some writers as having being “captured by the discourse” of the market. Most research on school choice quite properly uses only basic statistics, calculating frequencies and chi-squared, means and F-tests.
