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.
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Famous quotes containing the words social science, social, science and/or research:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Throughout the 1980’s, we did hear too much about individual gain and the ethos of selfishness and greed. We did not hear enough about how to be a good member of a community, to define the common good and to repair the social contract. And we also found that while prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
“One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)