Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Understand the role of design in conducting research
- Identify the purposes of conducting research
Observations of the world may lead to research questions and theories about how the world works. For instance, political participation is a topic that political scientists try to understand. A common research question is why people choose to vote for certain presidential candidates. It is possible that multiple theories can explain the same phenomena. As one can already guess, there are multiple answers to this question. One theory suggests that individuals vote for those who share the same party identity because sharing the same party provides an information shortcut, showcasing that the candidate possibly shares the same views on issues.
Another answer to this question is that individuals most likely vote for the incumbent president when the economy is doing well and are less likely to do so when the economy is not doing well. If there are multiple answers to a research question, how can researchers showcase why their answer is the answer to be considered? In other words, why the theory put forth is the best answer. In this chapter, we provide you with the tools to provide evidence to support your answer to your research question.
One way to assess the validity of a theoretical explanation is to understand the research design. Research design is an action plan that guides researchers in providing evidence to support their theory. Another way to think of research design is as a blueprint. When building a house, it is necessary to first create a plan that will provide the foundation for what you are doing. How big will the house be? How many bedrooms should the house have? What kinds of material should be purchased? Like a blueprint, research design is a critical first step that allows decisions to be made in advance. Because it can be exciting to try to find evidence to support your explanation of the world, there is a tendency to jump immediately ahead into data collection and analysis; however, research design comes before gathering data. There are multiple first decisions to make. We will cover different aspects of design, including purpose, types, sampling, and observations.
Suppose you were interested in the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections. In 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the candidates for their respective parties. Clinton was the heavily favored candidate with many national polls predicting she would win. While she did receive the most votes, Donald Trump won the most electoral votes to become the 45th president. How might you go about understanding the result of the election? To proceed, a researcher must first try to figure out the purpose of the research that will be conducted. Ultimately, the type of design will then be determined by its purpose. Three such purposes of research are exploration, description, and explanation.
Exploratory research sounds exactly like what you might be thinking—to explore. It could be possible that a phenomenon has recently occurred, and you do not know what is going on. On the other hand, it is possible that you do know what is going on, but you are trying to observe it so you can better understand it. In both instances, exploratory research seeks to understand an issue, trying to figure out what is going on. In the case of the election, researchers might try to figure out what rules exist to allow an individual to win a presidential election by way of Electoral College votes rather than the popular vote. Since multiple polls were being conducted, how were they conducted and where were they conducted? Who was included in these polls? What circumstances led to individuals to choose one candidate over the other?
Just as exploratory research is associated with exploration, descriptive research is associated with description. Descriptive research builds upon exploratory research to provide further information about a phenomenon. Exploratory research may assist researchers in identifying the many variables while descriptive research can expand on this by collecting additional information on these variables. Additionally, descriptive research can provide information about relationships between identified variables, often called correlational research. Descriptive research might ask what kind of people were most likely to vote for Trump and for Clinton? Which of these voters were most likely to turn out to vote? Were there voters who changed their minds at the last minute? These questions attempt to describe what was going on.
While exploratory and descriptive provide answers to “what,” explanatory research seeks to explain “why.” Explanatory research goes further than just explaining the relationships between variables and providing predictions, it tells us which variable likely led to a certain outcome. What caused the outcome to occur? In instances such as the 2016 election, it can be difficult to try to determine cause and effect but through research design we might try to create similar conditions and try to make causal inferences.
