umm the quadratic equation works with ALL of those types of questions, only that it is too time consuming...
for that question, u can simply work it out straight forward through factorising and then making the equation equal to zero in order to find what x is, so:
3x^2 + 2x - 1
now becomes
(3x-1) (x+1) through factorisation
and now
(3x-1) (x+1) = O inorder to find what x is
now x would then equal to 1/3 and -1