The origin of this book comes from my life story. As a child, one of my favourite games was pretending to be a teacher, and I wanted to be one. My sister was usually a pupil, with my two aunties the ‘naughty’ ones. I had a board and what seemed like loads and loads of stationery. That last bit never changed (and never will!). I was generally always a very good student and I didn’t do the adolescence bit very well, to be very honest. I was in therapy for over 10 years, and I loved having an hour of my life where somebody sat down and listened and cared about what I had to say (not that I did not have that in my life; it was just different). Therapy saved me from having a very different story. The time came when I had to decide what I wanted to be ‘for real’ this time. My auntie (one of the naughty pupils and basically a person who was a significantly positive influence in my life) suggested that if my goal was to help children maybe I could do that if I became a psychologist. So here I am, a psychologist writing about research methods (so that plan did not work out so well either).