This book provides a manual for undertaking research into the role of people in commonly shared resources, like forests, water bodies, fisheries and grazing pastures. The method in this book constructs indicators for the level of participation, net benefits from participating, forest dependence, forest quality, inequality, wealth and social differences. It can be concluded that (1) the studied organisations for forest management vary considerably in their effectiveness and (2) voluntary participation is most likely to emerge among the villagers who depend highly on the forest and perceive the quality of the forest as good.