ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the problems and opportunities en countered in the course of a research project concerning employers’ selection criteria and discrimination against black workers. There are two central issues. First, what are the implications of the methods one adopts, and the access strategies one follows - either by choice, or by simple dint of circumstance - for the grounds upon which we can presume to offer the resultant account as valid sociological knowledge? Second, the ethical issues which arose during the field work and the subsequent writing up are discussed, although-as is the way with ethical problems - no authoritative solutions can be offered. The problems attached to conducting research in the context of consultancy work are also broached. More generally, the chapter argues that methodological, epistemological and ethical issues are, in research practice, routinely implicated each with the others, and cannot be approached as discrete sets of problems.
