Social Science Research
Earl Babbie identifies exploration, description and explanation as the three purposes of social science research. Descriptive research classifies phenomena. Descriptive research generally precedes explanatory research. For example, over time chemists have described the elements through the periodic table. The periodic table’s description of the elements allows people and families to think about the elements in helpful ways. It allows for explanation and prediction when elements are combined. pi In addition, the conceptualizing of Descriptive research (categorization or taxonomy) precedes the hypotheses of explanatory research. For a discussion of how the underlying conceptualization of Exploratory research, Descriptive research and explanatory research fit together see Conceptual framework.
Read more about this topic: Descriptive Research
Famous quotes containing the words social, science and/or research:
“We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holesmismatches between old expectations and current realities.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)
“What is done for science must also be done for art: accepting undesirable side effects for the sake of the main goal, and moreover diminishing their importance by making this main goal more magnificent. For one should reform forward, not backward: social illnesses, revolutions, are evolutions inhibited by a conserving stupidity.”
—Robert Musil (18801942)
“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is What does a woman want? [Was will das Weib?]”
—Sigmund Freud (18561939)