Exploratory vs. Conclusive Research in Business

Research Design

• Research can be informal and unstructured.

Descriptive Research Design

• Used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied.
• Helps measure the relationship between two variables.
• Two types: Cross-sectional design and Longitudinal design.

Cross-sectional Design

• Collecting data from a given sample of population elements only once.
• Two types: Single cross-sectional design and Multiple cross-sectional design.
• Single cross-sectional design: One sample of respondents, information obtained once.
• Multiple cross-sectional design: Two or more samples of respondents, data obtained once from each sample.
• Types of Multiple cross-sectional design: Cohort analysis.
• Cohort analysis: A series of surveys conducted at appropriate intervals, focusing on a group of respondents who experience the same event within the same time interval.

Longitudinal Design

• The same sample remains over time, providing a series of pictures that give a deeper understanding of the situation and changes over time.
• Advantages: Ability to detect change at the individual level, uses panels, allows for large amounts of data to be collected.
• Disadvantages: Can be time-consuming, data can be inaccurate.

Causal Research Design

• Designed to determine whether one or more variables causes or affects one or more outcome variables.
• Objective: Determine causes and effect relationships.

Exploratory vs. Conclusive Research

• Exploratory Research:
  • Objective: Offer insight and understanding of the problem investigated.
  • Characteristics: Information is defined loosely, flexible research process, unstructured, small sample size, data analysis is qualitative.
  • Findings: Tentative, requires a follow-up exploratory or conclusive research.
• Conclusive Research:
  • Objective: Focuses on hypotheses testing and examining the relationship.
  • Characteristics: Information is clearly defined, structured and formal research process, large sample size, data analysis is quantitative.
  • Findings: Conclusive, used in decision making.

Basic Research Design

• Exploratory Research Design:
  • Objective: Discover ideas.
  • Characteristics: Flexible, versatile, front-end of total research, marked by prior formulation of specific hypothesis.
  • Methods: Expert survey, pilot survey, case studies, secondary data (qualitative analysis).
• Descriptive Research Design:
  • Objective: Describe the market characteristics or functions.
  • Characteristics: Preplanned and structured design.
  • Methods: Surveys, panels, observation, and other data.
• Causal Research Design:
  • Objective: Determine causes and effect relations.
  • Characteristics: Manipulation of one or more independent variables, measure the effect on dependent variables, control of mediating variables.
  • Methods: Experiments.

Exploratory Research Design

• Conducted for a research problem when the researcher has no past data or only few studies for reference.
• Helps with in-depth search of information where little is known about the role.