This is the first text to advance beyond traditional methods of research about promoting community health by presenting a new paradigm for emerging methodologies that integrate qualitative and quantitative research methods. Written for graduate students of public health and practising researchers alike, the book highlights new technologies and methodologies that facilitate a more fluid use of integrated methods and interdisciplinary expertise. This new paradigm stresses the effects of ""place"" - socioeconomic disadvantage, access to health care, quality of housing - as having great relevance for health outcomes. Use of these new research methods will provide greater insight into how and why contextual and community factors impact health and for developing more effective intervention programmes.

The text focuses on new methods for inferring meaning from both the quantitative information that characterises communities and the words community members use in speaking about their lives. It pays particular attention to data collection and analysis and clearly demonstrates the intricacies of using spatial, systems and modelling analysis for community public health. The first section on inferring meaning from numbers includes spatial analysis, multilevel modelling, agent-based models and realist reviews. Section two, about inferring meaning from words, addresses system dynamics, concept mapping, visual voices and media analysis. Chapters illustrate applications of new methodologies to pressing health issues and provide Web links to such content as interactive mapping and videos of agent-based models.