Introduction

The growth of a research field depends on the quality of the research it produces. The Emerging Adulthood Series, collecting books about flourishing and floundering in emerging adulthood, has already done an excellent job of communicating and disseminating the latest findings in the emerging adulthood research field. It also provides support for researchers in expanding their knowledge of the field and producing new research on emerging adulthood. However, in addition to deepening the understanding of the central themes in emerging adulthood research, such as marriage, spirituality, identity, and personality, this positive trend can be further strengthened by offering information about the “how” of the research process (i.e., the means by which the findings in this field are produced). While we recognize that the likely readers of this book already have sufficient skills in some particular methodologies, we also see that the methods used in emerging adulthood research are especially diverse and often involve quantitative cross-sectional, quantitative longitudinal, quantitative multi-informant, intensive longitudinal, qualitative, and mixed methods investigations. More so, studying emerging adults often presents specific challenges. For example, given the high demographic instability, obtaining a diverse and representative sample of emerging adults is more difficult than in other areas of human research. Considering these and other issues in emerging adulthood research, we believe a research methods book tailored to the study of emerging adulthood offers a set of advantages over other books on more general research methodology.