THREE PURPOSES OF RESEARCH
    Exploration
    Description
    Explanation

    This section examines some of the main reasons why researchers research.  In some cases, the purpose is exploration: gaining some familiarity with a topic, discovering some of its main dimensions, and possibly planning further, more structured research.

    Some research has the purpose of description, as in the Census Bureau's report on how many Americans there are, a political poll predicting who will win an election, or an anthropologist's ethnographic account of a preliterate tribe.

    Finally, research often has the aim of explanation.  In addition to knowing which candidates voters favor, we may go the next step to ask why?  What kinds of voters--men or women, young or old--prefer which candidates and why?

    This may seem pretty straightforward, but you'll discover there are some twists and turns in the road.  In the case of description, for example, you'll see that the answer you get often depends heavily on your definitions.  What percentage of Americans are "conservative," for example?  You cannot answer that question without defining what you mean by "conservative," and the definition you choose--from among the many possibilities--will move the percentage up or down among a group of people who haven't changed.

    Ironically, you will find that this is less of a problem in the case of explanation.  You'll see we might be able to say with confidence what causes people to be conservative even if we couldn't agree on what the term meant.