Explanatory Research
Explanatory Research is usually held for those ones that were researched not so good, or demands priorities, generates operational definitions and provides a better-researched model. It is one of the various types of research that is focused on details.
A person who investigates begins with the general, main idea and start using research as a tool that provides a better understanding of the subject that is going to be investigated in the future. That is why the aim is simple, having a small amount of information get more and more to succeed in it finally. To start research, you need to make an outline or speech outline to pitch your research idea to your professor or a boss or in a board meeting.
What is Explanatory Research
Explanatory research is very easy to understand – it is research which is making for discovering a problem, that hasn’t ever been studied clearly, to make definitions and explanations that haven’t made before and improve final results. Usually, this type of research relies on several important techniques:
- secondary research – such as looking for newly available literature.
- informal qualitative approaches, such as talking with other people, competitors or consumers.
- formal qualitative research through in-depth interviews, focus groups, projective methods, case studies or pilot studies
Purpose of Explanatory Research
As everyone knows, there are a lot of reasons why researches are done. But do you know what the purposes are? Why do you need to take into account all the styles, techniques and experiments made before?Why did we develop an entire group of sciences to understand humans? Because what good is being human if you cannot explain why we do something. Maybe I am a little too ‘meta’ about all this. The purpose of psychology is to explore, to describe and to explain how and why a person thinks, feels and acts. Purpose of Explanatory Research:
- Increasing Understanding: a very strong aim is to increase understanding between common people, or other researchers among the topic that is investigated. It is not summary or something like that – it just explanation of what and why something is investigating and happening.
- The flexibility of Sources: in the explanatory type of research is very common to use literature or data that have been already published. Think a lot before giving the list of sources – it has to be informative and concrete, and moreover precise.
- Better Conclusions: Explanation research can be very useful with having the aim to continue research approaches. A good understanding and explanation of the subject allow the researcher to post further research questions that will make great progress in the sphere he investigates. Also, this type of work is very good for a scientist to understand better his aim.
Some of the popular methods of explanatory research design include:
- Focus Group Research
- In-depth study of every single problem
- Case Analysis Research
- Literature Research
1. Focus Groups:
It is a method of the advanced level; here you have to gather from 8 up to 12 people who have to know at least some information about it. In the best variant, they will know as much as you do, it will increase the level of results very much.
2. Depth Interview:
But the very good start is, to begin with, one speech with one well-educated person who knows a lot about your topic. It can be anyone – professional or specialist from your work, and so on, no matter who, but matters his level of competency. Depth interviews are used widely for getting information and experience from people with some information connected with the concrete topic which you are discovering. Really, anyone with the information you need is a good candidate for this interview.
3. Case Analysis:
Researchers can understand and solve the problem more effectively by researching similar cases or other groups who had a similar case. This analysis will help to understand the situation better, and to avoid the appearance of problem again.
4. Literature Search:
One of the easiest and the fastest way is a search of the literature. Also, this is one of the cheapest ways to get needed information, hypothesis. Just look around, there is so much information available on the Internet and in libraries.
This search can include journals, newspapers, scientific literature and lots more. By the way – the Internet is still the best way to get needed information without even going out of the house.Believe that this article is useful and you found what you have been looking for here.
