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2 - Exploratory Research

from Part I - Discovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Colin Elman
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
John Gerring
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
James Mahoney
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
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Summary

Exploratory research is an attempt to discover something new and interesting by working through a research topic and is the soul of good research. Exploratory studies, a type of exploratory research, tend to fall into two categories: those that make a tentative first analysis of a new topic and those that propose new ideas or generate new hypotheses on an old topic. This chapter examines the history of exploratory studies, offers a typology of exploratory studies, and proposes a new type of exploratory study that is especially helpful for theorizing empirical material at an early stage. It argues that exploratory studies are an important part of a social scientist’s toolkit.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Production of Knowledge
Enhancing Progress in Social Science
, pp. 17 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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