The comprehensive Guide About Descriptive Research

There are four main types of research. The first is exploratory type research, while the second is descriptive type research. The third type of research is evaluation research, while the last one is explanatory research. The selection of a particular research strategy is not random. You have to select it based on your problem statement and objective. Usually, research work covers 5 W’s as follow,

• What
• When
• Why
• Who
• Where

Every research type uses a different W. In the case of descriptive research, you are supposed to address ‘what’. In this research type, you have to use demographic information of the targeted audience. You can use this information to know about the pattern of anything. For example, you want to know about sale and purchase trends in the market. You can go for descriptive research. It will tell you about the required trend without specifying the reason behind it. However, if you can feel still any issues, You can hire an online PhD dissertation writing service for the best assistance.

Another best use of this research type is to compare two different aspects. For example, you want to compare two different products and their trend in the market. For both products, you will design some questions. Here you will compare both of them through descriptive research. In this article, you will learn about different aspects of descriptive research.

Effective Descriptive Research

In order to make your research effective, you need to understand its basic requirements. You must have information related to its advantages as well as disadvantages. Furthermore, you should have a detailed understanding related to its different methods. All of these aspects will help you to decide if the descriptive research is best suitable for your research work or not.

Significant Advantages

1. In the case of descriptive research, the data collection methods are pretty straightforward. Based on experience, you can select any one type. It includes the observational method. But for this method, you are supposed to be an experienced person. Otherwise, you cannot use this method. Furthermore, case-study and survey methods also work well for this research type. Descriptive research is considered as best type because you can collect much information through it.
2. Another advantage of this research type is its accuracy. Most of the part of data is considered accurate. You do not have to worry about low-quality data.
3. Apart from all those students usually prefer it because of many reasons. The first reason is time duration. As a student, you have to complete your research in a given period of time. So, these research types help you to collect data in a short time. The second concern is related to money. Students only receive pocket money in which they have to cover all of their expenses. In the case of descriptive research, you do not have to spend much of your money. But this research type is one of the cheapest ways for data collection.

List of Disadvantages

1. The topmost disadvantage of descriptive research is that you can only identify the pattern for something without utilizing skills and knowledge. Here you cannot identify the reason behind any cause. If your research objective is to identify the causes behind any happening, you cannot use descriptive research data.
2. Unlike other research types, you cannot use collected data for statistical analysis. Because of no statistical analysis, you may experience some biased results. So have to be very careful while collecting data. If still, you find your results biased, you have to come up with a proper justification.
3. Another lack of this research type is that you may not be able to use its data for future study. You cannot be sure about the repetition of descriptive research.

Distinctive Methods to Conduct Research

There are three methods that are used to conduct descriptive research. In order to make your research effective, it’s very important to understand the proper use of each method. You have to see in which condition each method works well. Again your problem statement and objective of research decide which method is acceptable to conduct.

Let’s discuss each of the methods in detail.

Case study method

In the case-study method, you can target individuals as per requirement. In the same way, you can target people in the form of a group. In both ways, case-study methods facilitate you very well. Based on the collected information you can design a hypothesis for your descriptive research work.

If you want to work on the ‘cause and effect’ of something, then it’s better not to use the case-study method. This method is considered biased because of its dependency on the researcher. Some researchers do not take it valuable for ’cause and effect’ case. Another opinion related to the case-study method is that it is better not to generalize anything based on it. Whatever you conclude based on this data can be beneficial for the current situation. But it’s preferable not to predict or generalize anything.

Observational Method of Data Collection

If you observe things for qualitative data, you have to work on their associations. Depending on the objective of descriptive research, you have to collect data in the form of numbers. For example, you want to collect data for your clothing brand. Here you can ask for age and size. Both of the entities will be in numeric form. Same as you have to see the factors related to qualitative data for descriptive research.

Survey Research

This is the easiest way to conduct descriptive research. In this method, no one will ask about any experience. Also, you can find different ways and research principles to collect data. You have to collect data through a questionnaire in the survey research method. You can do this by online means as well as offline means. I remember I had to collect data for my research, and due to pandemic, I could not go out. So I shared my questionnaire in my social circle and collected up to seventy present data by online means. In the same way, you can add go for the open-ended question as well as close-ended question. You just have to see which question type can address your issue more effectively.

Final Thoughts

Descriptive research is mostly used while you are dealing with qualitative data and aiming to describe the qualities/nature of your population. If you are doing the same in your research, then the points aforementioned above will definitely help you to choose the right descriptive type for your study. Good Luck!!