Most research can be divided into three different categories; exploratory, descriptive and causal. Each serves a different end purpose and can only be used in certain ways. In the online survey world, mastery of all three can lead to sounder insights and greater quality information. Over the next couple weeks we’ll be taking a look into all these forms of research and how you can incorporate each in your organization’s strategies for improvement and growth as well as measuring your company’s level of success. Today, let’s do a quick overview of all three types of research, and how they fit in a research plan.
Exploratory
Research
Exploratory research is an important part of any marketing
or business strategy. Its focus is on the discovery of ideas and insights as
opposed to collecting statistically accurate data. That is why exploratory
research is best suited as the beginning of your total research plan. It is
most commonly used for further defining company issues, areas for potential
growth, alternative courses of action, and prioritizing areas that require
statistical research.
When it comes to online surveys, the most common
example of exploratory research takes place in the form of open-ended questions. Think of the exploratory questions in
your survey as expanding your understanding of the people you are surveying.
Text responses may not be statistically measurable, but they will give you
richer quality information that can lead to the discovery of new initiatives or
problems that should be addressed.
Descriptive
Research
Descriptive research takes up the bulk of online surveying
and is considered conclusive in nature due to its quantitative nature. Unlike
exploratory research, descriptive research is preplanned and structured in
design so the information collected can be statistically inferred on a population.
The main idea behind using this type of research
is to better define an opinion, attitude, or behavior held by a group of
people on a given subject. Consider your everyday multiple choice question.
Since there are predefined categories a respondent must choose from, it is
considered descriptive research. These questions will not give the unique
insights on the issues like exploratory research would. Instead, grouping the
responses into predetermined choices will provide statistically inferable data.
This allows you to measure the significance of your results on the overall
population you are studying, as well as the changes of your respondent’s
opinions, attitudes, and behaviors over time.
Causal Research
Like descriptive research, causal research is quantitative in nature as well as
preplanned and structured in design. For this reason, it is also considered
conclusive research. Causal research differs in its attempt to explain the
cause and effect relationship between variables. This is opposed to the
observational style of descriptive research, because it attempts to decipher
whether a relationship is causal through experimentation. In the end, causal
research will have two objectives: 1) To understand which variables are the
cause and which variables are the effect, and 2) to determine the nature of the
relationship between the causal variables and the effect to be predicted.
For example, a cereal brand owner wants to learn
if they will receive more sales with their new cereal box design. Instead of
conducting descriptive research by asking people whether they would be more
likely to buy their cereal in its new box, they would set up an experiment in
two separate stores. One will sell the cereal in only its original box and the
other with the new box. Taking care to avoid any outside sources of bias, they would then measure the difference
between sales based on the cereal packaging. Did the new packaging have any
effect on the cereal sales? What was that effect?