How to Conduct Exploratory Research for Your Early Research Needs
How to Conduct Exploratory Research for Your Early Research Needs
Exploratory research is one of the main types of general and survey research. It works to investigate an issue, occurrence or phenomenon that is not clearly defined.
The most preliminary form of research, exploratory precedes descriptive research, another early survey research campaign.
As such, market researchers and virtually all other researchers need to incorporate exploratory research in their market research campaigns, as they would be remiss to not fully comprehend a problem before probing further into it or attempting to fix it.
This article examines exploratory research, what makes it up, how to conduct it, how it differs from the other main forms of research and the kinds of surveys to use to carry out this research.
Defining Exploratory Research
Exploratory research is defined as an initial form of research that studies a hypothetical or theoretical idea, that is, one which has not yet been fully developed, let alone proven.
As such, this research begins with a researcher’s idea about something within their sphere of study; for example, they’ve noticed interest around their brand has fallen in a particular quarter.
The researcher will thus use exploratory research to gain a better understanding of this unexplored idea, prove that it exists in significant ways/amounts and study other issues surrounding it.
The issues and other details that they discover can be carried over as the focus for future research campaigns, namely descriptive research, as the next logical type of research.
Exploratory research is defined as a research used to investigate a problem which is not clearly defined. It is conducted to have a better understanding of the existing problem, but will not provide conclusive results.
Also called grounded theory approach or interpretive research, exploratory research helps answer questions like the “what,” “why” and “how.”
The Key Aspects of Exploratory Research
Now that we have established the core meaning and function of exploratory research, it is critical to understand its makeup. This form of research has various qualities researchers ought to look into, to better understand its characteristics.
The following enumerates the key features of this research:
- The initial form of research around a particular subject of study.
- Lays the groundwork about a study for future research.
- Investigates an issue that is not fully defined.
- Gathers information that can be explored in more depth in descriptive research.
- Exists in two forms: Via a new topic or via a new angle
- A new topic is usually unexpected and provides startling findings.
- A new angle arises from different ways of looking at things, either from a theoretical perspective or a new way of measuring something.
- Enables a researcher to answer foundational questions such as: What is the problem? What is the purpose of the research? What topics should be studied?
- Exploratory research uses unstructured studies.
- Involves forming a few theories which can support its findings to make it easier for the researcher to assess them.
- Typically involves yielding qualitative research.
- Can produce quantitative research that can be used to generalize larger samples in certain cases, such as through the use of experiments and quantitative surveys.
Why Your Business Needs Exploratory Research
Businesses need exploratory research for a variety of reasons. Firstly, this research method uncovers details and facts about a murky subject — the kinds that a business hasn’t previously known about.
It sets the foundation for understanding a problem, occurrence or phenomenon by finding its basic properties. This ensures that a business finds the right information (such as the variables) which can be further studied in descriptive, correlational and experimental research.
Although it rarely provides enough insights to make conclusive business decisions, it forms the basis of a research issue on which businesses can set up objectives and requirements for continual studies.
After all, a company cannot conduct further research around a topic, without assuredly knowing about its existence and certain characteristics that warrant further exploration.
With exploratory research, businesses extract:
- The groundwork for other types of research
- Key facts about matters critical to their business
- Opinions from their target market
- The existence of specific market segments (via market segmentation)
- An understanding what is worth pursuing for survey studies and other research
Exploratory Research Survey Examples
- The qualitative survey
- Helps answer the what, why and how with open-ended questions.
- Extracts key high-level information in depth.
- The cross-sectional survey
- Studies a particular population at one particular point in time.
- Can help form a hypothesis of for example, shopping behavior during a seasonal campaign.
- The customer experience (CX) survey
- Finds foundational insights on customers’ CX.
- Finds glitches and other issues in a customer journey that a business was not aware of.
- The employee feedback survey
- Finds unknown employee sentiment around various areas of business.
- Useful during mergers, acquisitions, growth spurts or simple quarterly reviews.
- The business survey
- For general inquiries, understanding the high level details.
- Although it can be used for other forms of research, this survey can help identify a problem.
How Exploratory Research Differs from Correlational, Exploratory and Experimental Research
Exploratory research differs significantly from the other main types of research methods such as correlational research and experimental research.
However, exploratory research is often conflated with descriptive research. Although both forms of research are conducted in the early stages of the entire research process, they are not the same, as they bear key differing qualities.
Exploratory research provides the foundation, hypothesis or discovery about a problem the researcher suspects is present. Thus, it is the very first form of research required to conduct over an unstudied or unknown topic.
Descriptive research, on the other hand, is predicated on describing something already established, discovered or suspected in exploratory research. Thus descriptive research follows exploratory research in the overall research process. It describes characteristics, functions, occurrences, frequencies and other required key facts before the researcher moves to correlational or experimental research.
Descriptive research, as opposed to exploratory research, is conclusive. It is predominantly quantitative and fixed on creating statistics. It is also rigid and structured, while exploratory research is flexible and unstructured.
Correlational research differs from exploratory research in that it is one of the latter forms or research, whereas exploratory is the most preliminary kind.
It processes well-established information that exploratory and descriptive research have found. Its primary function is to uncover relationships among variables to see how one may affect another or others.
The results of correlational research can be used to make predictions of future events from present insights.
Experimental research contrasts with exploratory research, in that it is also one of the latter forms of research, if not the very final. Unlike exploratory research, experimental research is far less observational or passive. Rather, as its name hints at, it is highly experimental, as it uses a scientific approach on two sets of variables.
Using a scientific research design, it forms experiments to find cause-and-effect relationships between defined variables. Also called hypothesis testing or a deductive research method, itis conducted in a controlled environment so that variables can be measured, calculated and then compared. .
Experimental research involves manipulating variables to come to a conclusion or finding. It helps find conclusions to an original subject of research or answers to a previously discovered problem in exploratory research.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Exploratory Research
Exploratory research offers several benefits for researchers and businesses. However, as with all other research methods, there are a few setbacks to this type of research.
The Advantages
- Enables further research on an established issue.
- Unstructured, allowing the researcher to be flexible in their study.
- A low-cost form of research.
- Allows researchers to decide whether a topic is worth studying further or not.
- Can save valuable time, money and resources, if a discovered topic is deemed unnecessary for further research.
- Helps researchers in the early stages of discovering the cause of a problem.
- Points researchers to an objective or signals researchers to avoid some.
The Disadvantages
- Qualitative data, the main kind of data derived from exploratory research, can be easy to misinterpret when generalizing a population.
- Although it steers further research, it is inconclusive.
- Although it can be used in different survey sampling methods, it usually involves using a smaller sampling pool, making it inept at generalizing populations.
- When collected via secondary sources, the data may be outdated and thus not fully accurate with the present.
How to Conduct Exploratory Research
This form of research is known to be unstructured, so there are no hard and fast rules on how to conduct it, as long as it adheres to its key aspects. The following explains the basic universal approach for conducting exploratory research.
- Identify the problem: The core of the research, this may take a few brainstorming sessions.
- Accrue secondary research that relates to your suspected problem, issue or phenomenon.
- Conduct a basic survey to see if there is any truth to your identified issue.
- Create the hypothesis: If there are no prior studies or the problem is not fully under control or has a workaround form a hypothesis based on research from the previous step.
- Conduct further research: Continue researching to see if there is any truth to the existence of the problem and its possible solution/hypothesis.
- Conduct surveys, focus groups, interviews and more secondary research.
- Decide whether the subject at large and its hypothesis are worth delving into further in descriptive research.
Excelling in Exploratory Research
Exploratory research forms the building blocks of an overall research project, as it constructs the groundwork of a research subject that will later be explored (in descriptive research), tested (in correlational research) and manipulated in (experimental research).
As a researcher, perhaps there will be times that you won’t need to conduct much exploratory research. This is true in cases where you have some familiarity with a subject or are certain of its existence in your business, in which case, you can proceed to descriptive or experimental research.
In any case, you need to be fully aware of a problem or other phenomenon before conducting any further research on it. This is where exploratory research excels.
In order to be skillful in exploratory research, you need to turn to several resources, such as secondary research, case studies, literature within your industry/niche and finally, surveys. Although surveys ask for specifics, they too are invaluable for conducting exploratory research, as they help uncover the what, giving credence to any suspicions you may have had prior to endeavoring in research.
As such, using a potent online survey platform will assist, guide and launch the key tool in your exploratory research.
Frequently asked questions
What is exploratory research?
Exploratory research is conducted on ideas that are not fully developed. Researchers usually start brainstorming an idea that lies within their specialization and develop it into a broader concept.
What are the key features of exploratory research?
The key features of exploratory research include the initial research on a specific topic, laying the foundation of the research topic, investigating the issue, and collecting information that supports descriptive research.
Why is exploratory research important for businesses?
Exploratory research is vital for businesses, as it helps them understand the root causes of their problems and find ways to solve them. As a result, businesses find the correct information and access appropriate resources to develop the chosen idea. It can also help enterprises to set up objectives for continual development studies.
What kind of surveys can you make with exploratory research?
Exploratory research can help you conduct:
Qualitative surveys – brilliant for gathering in-depth information and open-ended questions
Cross-sectional surveys – suitable for studying a sample size of a particular demographic at a time
Employee feedback surveys – help understand how employees feel about the workplace and their work
What is the difference between exploratory research and experimental research?
Exploratory research takes an idea and develops it further. But experimental research is far less observational as it uses a scientific approach to test two sets of variables.
Understanding the 3 Main Types of Survey Research & Putting Them to Use
Understanding the 3 Main Types of Survey Research & Putting Them to Use
Surveys establish a powerful primary source of market research. There are three main types of survey research; understanding these will not merely organize your survey studies, but help you form them from the onset of your research campaign.
It is crucial to be proficient in these types of survey research, as surveys should never be used as lone tools. A survey is a vehicle for granting insights, as part of a larger market research or other research campaigns.
Understanding the three types of survey research will help you learn aspects within these forms that you were either not aware of or were not well-versed in.
This article explores the three main types of survey research and teaches you when to best implement each form of research.
Putting the Types of Survey Research into Perspective
With the presence of online surveys and other market research methods such as focus groups, there are ever-growing survey research methods. Before you choose a method, it is critical to decide on the type of survey research you need to conduct.
The type of survey research points to the kind of study you are going to apply in your campaign and all of its implications. The survey research type essentially hosts the research methods, which house the actual surveys. As such, the research type is one of the highest levels of the process, so consider it as a starting point in your research campaign.
Remember, that while there are various research types, the three presented in this article delineate the main types used in survey research. Researchers can apply these types to other research techniques (such as focus groups, interviews, etc.), but they are best suited for surveys.
Descriptive Research
The first main type of survey research is descriptive research. This type is centered on describing, as its name suggests, a topic of study. This can be a population, an occurrence or a phenomenon.
Descriptive research is often the first type of research applied around a research issue, because it paints a picture of a topic, rather than investigating why it exists to begin with.
The Key Aspects of Descriptive Research
The following provides the key attributes of descriptive research, so as to provide a full understanding of it.
- Makes up the majority of online survey methods.
- Concentrates on the what, when, where and how questions, rather than the why.
- Lays out the particulars surrounding a research topic, but not its origin.
- Handles quantitative studies.
- Deemed conclusive due to its quantitative data.
- Provides data that provides statistical inferences on a target population.
- Preplanned and highly structured.
- Aims to define an occurrence, attitude or opinions of the studied population.
- Measures the significance of the results and formulates trends.
- Can be used in cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys.
Survey Examples of Descriptive Research
There are various types of surveys to use for descriptive research. In fact, you can apply virtually all of them if they meet the above requirements. Here are the major ones:
- Descriptive surveys: These gather data about different subjects. They are set to find how different conditions can be gained by the subjects and the extent thereof. Ex: determining how qualified applicants are to a job are via a survey checking for this.
- Descriptive-normative surveys: Much like descriptive surveys, but the results of the survey are compared with a norm.
- Descriptive analysis surveys: This survey describes a phenomenon via an analysis that divides the subject into 2 parts. Ex: analyzing employees with the same job role across geolocations.
- Correlative Survey: This determines whether the relationship between 2 variables is either positive or negative; sometimes it can be used to find neutrality. For example, if A and B have negative, positive or no correlation.
Exploratory Research
Exploratory research is predicated on unearthing ideas and insights rather than amassing statistics. Also unlike descriptive research, exploratory research is not conclusive. This is because this research is conducted to obtain a better understanding of an existing phenomenon, one that has either not been studied thoroughly or is lacking some information.
Exploratory research is most apt to use at the beginning of a research campaign. In business, this kind of research is necessary for identifying issues within a company, opportunities for growth, adopting new procedures and deciding on which issues require statistical research, i.e., descriptive research.
The Key Aspects of Exploratory Research
Also called interpretative research or grounded theory approach, the following provides the key attributes of exploratory research, including how it differs from descriptive research.
- Uses exploratory questions, which are intended to probe subjects in a qualitative manner.
- Provides quality information that can uncover other unknown issues or solutions.
- Is not meant to provide data that is statistically measurable.
- Used to get a familiarity with an existing problem by understanding its specifics.
- Starts with a general idea with the outcomes of the research being used to find related issues with the research subject.
- Typically exists within open-ended questions.
- Its process varies based on the new insights researchers gain and how they choose to go about them.
- Usually asks for the what, how and most distinctively, the why.
- Due to the absence of past research on the subject, exploratory research is time-consuming,
- Not structured and flexible.
Examples of Exploratory Research
Since exploratory research is not structured and often scattered, it can exist within a multitude of survey types. For example, it can be used in an employee feedback survey, a cross-sectional survey and virtually any other that allows you to ask questions on the why and employs open-ended questions.
Here are a few other ways to conduct exploratory research:
- Case studies: They help researchers analyze existing cases that deal with a similar phenomenon. This method often involves secondary research, unless your business or organization has case studies on a similar topic. Perhaps one of your competitors offers one as well. With case studies, the researcher needs to study all the variables in the case study in relation to their own.
- Field Observations: This method is best suited for researchers who deal with their subjects in physical environments, for example, those studying customers in a store or patients in a clinic. It can also be applied by studying digital behaviors using a session replay tool.
- Focus Groups: This involves a group of people, typically 6-10 coming together and speaking with the researcher, as opposed to having a one on one conversation with the researcher. Participants are chosen to provide insights on the topic of study and express it with other members of the focus group, while the researcher observes and acts as a moderator.
- Interviews: Interviews can be conducted in person or over the phone. Researchers have the option of interviewing their target market, their overall target population, or subject matter experts. The latter will provide significant and professional-grade insights, the kind that non-experts typically can’t offer.
Causal Research
The final type of survey research is causal research, which, much like descriptive research is structured, preplanned and draws quantitative insights. Also called explanatory research, causal research aims to discover whether there is any causality between the relationships of variables.
As such, focuses primarily on cause-and-effect relationships. In this regard, it stands in opposition with descriptive research, which is far broader. Causal research has only two objects:
- Understand which variable are the cause and which are the effect
- Decipher the workings of the relationship between the causal variables, including how they will hammer out the effect.
The Key Aspects of Causal Research
The following provides the key traits of causal research, including how it differs from descriptive and exploratory research.
- Considered conclusive research due to its structured design, preplanning and quantitative nature.
- Its two objectives make this research type more scientific than exploratory and descriptive research.
- Focuses on observing the variations in variables suspected as causing the changes in other variables.
- Measure changes in both the suspected causal variables and the ones they affect.
- Variables suspected of being causal are isolated and tested to meet the aforesaid two objectives.
- This experimentation shows researchers whether it is worth investing in a variable or to get rid of it.
- For example, an advertisement or a sales promotion
- Requires setting objectives, preplanning parameters, and identifying potential causal variables and affected variables to reduce researcher bias.
- Requires accounting for all the possible causal factors that may be affecting the supposed affected variable, i.e., there can’t be any outside (non-accounted) variables.
- All confounding variables that can affect the results have to be kept consistent and controlled to make sure no hidden variable is in any way influencing the relationship between two variables.
- To deem a cause and effect relationship, the cause would have needed to precede the effect.
Examples of Causal Research
Causal research depends on the most scientific method out of the three types of survey research. Given that it requires experimentation, a vast amount of surveys can be conducted on the variables to determine if they are causal, non-causal or the ones being affected.
Here are a few examples of use causal research
- Product testing: Particularly useful if it’s a new product to test market demand and sales capacity.
- Advertising Improvements: Researchers can study buying behaviors to see if there is any causality between ads and how much people buy or if the advertised products reach higher sales. The outcomes of this research can help marketers tweak their ad campaigns, discard them altogether or even consider product updates.
- Increase customer retention: This can be conducted in different manners, such as via in-store experimentations, via digital shopping or through different surveys. These experiments will help you understand what current customers prefer and what repels them.
- Community Needs: Local governments can conduct the community survey to discover opinions surrounding community issues. For example, researchers can test whether certain local laws, transportation availability and authorizations are well or poorly received and if they correlate with certain happenings.
Deciding on Which of the Types of Research to Conduct
Market researchers and marketers often have several aspects of their discipline that would benefit off of conducting these three types of survey research. What’s most empowering about these types of survey research is that they are not limited to surveys alone.
Instead, they bolster the idea that surveys should not be used as lone tools. Rather, survey research powers an abundance of other market research methods and campaigns. As such, researchers should set aside surveys after they’ve decided on high-level campaigns and their needs.
As such, consider the core of what you need to study. Can your survey be applied to a macro-application? For example, in the business sector, this can be marketing, branding, advertising, etc.
Next, does your study require a methodical approach? For example, does it need to focus on one period of time among one population? If so, you will need to conduct a cross-sectional survey.
Or does it require to be conducted over some period of time? This will require implementing a longitudinal study. Once you figure out these components, you should move on to choosing the type of survey research you’re going to conduct. However, you can also decide on this before you choose one of the methodical methods.
Whichever route you decide to take, you’ll need a strong online survey provider, as this does, after all, involve surveys. The correct online survey platform will set your research up for success.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it important to understand the types of survey research?
The type of survey research informs the kind of study you’ll be conducting. It becomes the backbone of your campaign and all its implications. Basically, the types of survey research host their designated research methods, which house the surveys. Therefore, the types of survey research you decide on are at the highest level of the research process and act as your starting point.
What is exploratory research?
Exploratory research is the most preliminary form of research, establishing the foundation of a research process. focuses on unearthing ideas and insights rather than gathering statistics. It’s not a conclusive form of research-- rather, it is conducted to bolster understanding of a specific phenomenon. It is typically the first form of research, setting the foundation for a research campaign.
What is descriptive research?
Descriptive research focuses on describing a topic of study like a population, an occurrence or a phenomenon. It is performed early on in the overall research process, as it paints an overall picture of a topic, while extracting the key details that you wouldn’t find with exploratory research alone.
What is a cross-sectional survey?
A cross-sectional survey is a survey used to gather research about a particular population at a specific point in time. It is considered to be the snapshot of a studied population.
What is causal research?
Causal research is typically performed in the latter stages of the entire research process, following correlational or descriptive research. It is conducted to find the causality between variables. It involves more than merely observing, as it relies on experiments and the manipulation of variables
How can you decide which types of survey research to conduct?
Take a look at the core of what you need to study. Are you trying to focus on one period of time among a population? Does your survey research need to be conducted over a period of time? Questions like these will lead you to the right research type.