Resource managers are increasingly required to consider the views, perspectives, attitudes, values and policy preferences of the public in their decisions about natural resource allocation and use. The public comprises a multitude of stakeholder groups. This review is intended to introduce resource managers to some of the key social science literature on stakeholder attitudes and values. Social science researchers employ several methodological tools through which the general public, or specific publics, may express their views, perspectives, policy preferences, and values. Specific methods used by political scientists (policy community/policy network approach, and public choice theory), sociologists (questionnaires, surveys, semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis, and participant observation), and economists (input–output analysis, travel cost models, and contingent valuation and choice experiments) are reviewed in this document. We also discuss how social science research might be conceptualized as a form of public participation in natural resource management.