EXPLORATORY STUDIES

Research Types / Methods

Exploration is particularly useful when researchers lack a clear idea of the problems they will meet during the study. Through exploration the researchers develop the concepts more clearly, establish priorities, and improve the final research design. Exploration may also save time and money if it is decided the problem is not as important as first thought.

When we consider the scope of qualitative research, several approaches are adaptable for exploratory investigations of management questions:

1. Indepth-interviewing (usually conversational rather than structured).

2. Participant observation (to perceive firsthand what that participants in the setting experience).

3. Films, photographs, and videotape (to capture what that participants in the setting experience).

4. Projective techniques and psychological testing (such as a Thematic Apperception Test, projective measures, games, or role-play).

5. Case studies (for an indepth contextual analysis of a few events or conditions).

6. Street ethnography (to discover how a cultural subgroup describes and structures its world at the street level).

7. Elite interviewing (for information from influential or well-informed people in an organization or community).

8. Document analysis (to evaluate historical or contemporary confidential or public records, reports, government documents, and opinions).

9. Proxemics and kinesics (to study of the use of space and body motion communication, respectively).

DESCRIPTIVE STUDIES

The objective of descriptive study is to learn the who, what, when, where, and how of a topic. The study may be simple or complex; it may be done in many settings.

The simplest descriptive study concerns a univariate question or hypothesis in which we ask about, or state something about, the size, form, distribution, or existence of a variable. In an account analysis at a savings and loan association, we might be interested in developing a profile of savers. We may want first to locate them in relation to the association office. The question might be, “What percent of the savers live within a two-mile radius of the office?”