Types of Research

LO1 : Explain Types of Research 

Welcome. Have you given some deep thought to the different types of research available? Hopefully you have. If you haven’t do not worry, I will start off by an explanation of applied and basic research.

Applied research is undertaken to improve the quality of practice of a particular discipline. 

Basic research is to generate a body of knowledge by trying to comprehend how certain problems that occur in organizations can be solved.

 Now let’s look at the more details on exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory research

Exploratory research is usually conducted when a researcher has just begun an investigation and wishes to understand the topic generally.

Descriptive research aims to describe or define the topic at hand.

Explanatory research aims to explain why particular phenomena work in the way that they do.

The following resources explain the types of research:

Go through the VIDEO and PPT slides  (attached in the Supplementary Materials) to get a better understanding of the types of research

This video is intended to enhance participants' capacity to understand the different types of research. 

 Apart from the resources provided, please also search for related resources (research articles, book chapters, videos, etc.)

 Completing this activity will enable you to distinguish between the types of research and why they fall into one or the other of the categories