What is Reasearch?
Let’s take a look on what research is, what its purpose is, and what are the basic stratifications within the field of the research.
The most popular definition of research was given by Elias in 1986. So, let’s take a look at what research is and its aims. Aims of research as far as I can see are same in all Sciences, which is if put simply, to make known something that was previously unknown, to advance human knowledge, to make it more certain or better fitting and finally, the discovery. What research is is basically to discover something because we want to know about something that was previously unknown to human beings. It is important that research is the same in all Sciences so you can discover something in any science and you basically make some things more certain or better fitting or you will discover something totally new. But there are going to be some stratification within the research. The very first stratification is between the scientific and social science research.
Scientific Research vs Social Science Research:
On one hand we have scientific research and on the other hand, social science research. When talking of scientific research what research is can be thought or imagined as some doctors in laboratories experimenting. This picture of what research is could be quite a good fit because scientific research is relies on Natural Sciences. Natural Sciences and the very basic idea of what research is that it should be replicable or it can be replicated because when you are relying on some natural science subjects such as mathematics physics or chemistry, whenever or wherever the similar research is carried out in the world, it should replicate itself with quite a similar result. Another characteristic of a scientific research is that what research is that this research should enlarge or enrich the overall body overall of your science. So you should know that while carrying out a scientific research, you are not going to carry out some Applied Research. What research is in this instance is that you are not going to just take some touristic attraction and research on what is so special there. It is because you are too narrow with your field and if you really want to be scientific; you should generally contribute or enrich the science within which you are doing your research. On the other hand, when talking about social sciences, what research is as if you are going to meet something called the deposit anti positivism. The basic idea of course here is anti-positivism. It relies on positivism, an idea or philosophy coined and elaborated on by Auguste Comte. It relies as we have said, on Natural Sciences that the research should be replicated and it should enrich the overall body of that science. But what research is in anti-positivism is rather looking inside of the minds of people. You can and get to see inside people’s minds. What you really focus on is what leads the people into any sort of a behavior. What research is in social science is the ability to tell you that people exhibit different behavior and to understand them and the inner instincts that drive those behavior patterns. These are a few very basic differences between what research is in scientific and social science fields but maybe the more important differentiation on what research is in natural vs. social sciences is that the latter is the more practical one. You are going to see the stratification according to the types of research, the types of research. What research is that at first, you are going to be able to describe what is out there, then you are going to describe why these things happen or how they do happen, and finally it is a special case and you are going to be able to consider your results. We have special names for these three kinds of researches. In a case where we are discovering what is going on and what is happening, what research is called is descriptive research. What research is when it is descriptive that we describe things, how do they occur and when do they occur. Once we know this we conduct explanatory research. What research is when it is explanatory is that it tells us how and why these things happen. So explanatory research will simply explain how or why things are as they are. Finally the last step of what research is to be conducted is the evaluative research. So now we evaluate. This is quite a simple task. When you conduct a research, you might conduct it for some government organization and it might ask you if its policy and program right. So, we conduct evaluative research. What research is when evaluative is to evaluate or find out whether our program or policy was fine. So this was the basics about what research is. We divide it into scientific and social sciences where you will probably meet positivism and antipositivism in some future studies and you are going to meet three kinds of research and what each kind of research is.