The Exploratory or Formulative Design
Chapter -Seven
Syllabus topic 7, "Preparation of the Research Design"
Pages 459 to 461 of 543
In one line
An exploratory design is used when the researcher does not yet know enough to ask a precise question, and its product is not an answer but a well formed problem and a testable hypothesis.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the exploratory or formulative research design is employed where the subject is little known, its purpose being to gain familiarity with the phenomenon, to clarify concepts and to formulate the problem and the hypotheses for later investigation rather than to test them; its usual methods are a survey of the existing literature, an experience survey of persons familiar with the field, and the analysis of selected instances that stimulate insight, and it is flexible by design, being revised as understanding grows.
When to use it
When the literature is empty, chapter 1080's first source.
When the researcher does not know what to count, chapter 820: in an unmeasured field the right questions are not yet known.
When the concepts are unsettled, chapter 830: what counts as a legal aid clinic, as being informed, as awareness.
And when a pilot is needed before committing. An exploratory phase of two weeks may save six weeks of collecting the wrong thing.
In Indian legal research this is the usual starting position, chapter 740, because the field is largely unmeasured, so a student should expect to begin here rather than treat it as a preliminary to be skipped.
The three classical methods
One: the survey of literature. Read what exists, including in adjacent fields and in other jurisdictions, chapter 1290. Where the literature is empty, that emptiness is itself the first finding.
Two: the experience survey. Talk to people who know the field: practitioners, officials, para-legal volunteers, clinic teachers, court staff. Not a sample and not evidence of magnitude, chapter 1020, but the fastest way to learn what actually happens and what the real difficulties are.
A caution about it. Those with experience report the memorable rather than the typical, so an experience survey generates hypotheses and never conclusions.
Three: the analysis of insight-stimulating instances. Selected cases examined closely because they are likely to be illuminating: an extreme instance, a striking failure, a place where something works. This is purposive selection, chapter 1020, and a case study in miniature, chapter 980.
What it produces
A defined problem, chapter 1100.
A hypothesis worth testing, chapter 1150.
The vocabulary and categories the instrument will use. This is the concrete product: the five categories of reason that become the response options of a schedule, chapter 970, came from open interviews.
An operational definition, chapter 1050, because exploration is how a researcher discovers that the concept needs one.
The Exploratory or Formulative Design
And a decision about feasibility, chapter 1090, because exploration reveals what access will actually be granted.
What it must not produce
A conclusion. An exploratory study cannot establish magnitude, relationship or cause. Its samples are purposive, its instruments are unstructured and its data are not comparable.
A percentage. Nine people spoken to are nine people, chapter 870.
Or a recommendation resting on it alone, because a reform proposal needs a cause established, chapter 740.
And the characteristic dishonesty of this design is presenting exploratory material as though it were descriptive, which is chapter 1020's error in a different dress.
Its flexibility, and the discipline that flexibility needs
The design is meant to change. That is what distinguishes it from the descriptive design of chapter 1220, which must be fixed before collection.
But flexibility is not absence of record. Everything must still be written down: whom the researcher spoke to, when, what was asked, and why the approach changed.
Because the methodology chapter will have to describe it, chapter 1310, and an exploratory phase reported as I spoke to some people is worthless, while one reported as eleven conversations with named categories of person over three weeks, which produced these five categories, is a real account of how the instrument was built.
Exploratory and descriptive in one study
The ordinary shape of good work in an unmeasured field, and the shape this book has recommended throughout.
Phase one, exploratory. Literature, experience survey, a few instances. Product: the problem, the categories, the hypothesis, the instrument.
Phase two, descriptive. A fixed design, a probability sample where possible, the instrument built in phase one, chapter 1220.
And the dissertation reports both, saying plainly which phase produced what. A reader who is told that the five categories came from eleven open conversations, and that the proportions came from a systematic sample of ninety-six, can judge each on its own terms.
A worked example
A student wants to study why people in a settlement do not use legal aid, and knows nothing.
Phase one, three weeks.
Literature. Nothing specific to this taluk; general material on legal aid awareness; the District Authority's annual returns, which give assignments but not refusals.
Experience survey. Conversations with the para-legal volunteer at the nearest clinic, two panel lawyers, an anganwadi worker and a school teacher. What emerges: people do come, but they come after the time limit; the office hours coincide with working hours; and one earlier applicant was turned away and told everybody.
Insight-stimulating instances. Two people identified through the volunteer who tried and stopped, interviewed at length.
The product. A problem: the loss occurs after awareness and before application. Five candidate reasons, two of which the researcher would never have guessed. An operational definition of tried. And a schedule with those five reasons as response options and an other.
The Exploratory or Formulative Design
Phase two. The systematic sample of chapter 1000, with that schedule.
Notice that phase one produced nothing quotable and made phase two possible, which is exactly what an exploratory design is for.
Quick revision
The exploratory or formulative design is used where the subject is little known; its purpose is familiarity, clarification of concepts and formulation of the problem and hypotheses, not testing.
Three methods: the survey of literature, where emptiness is itself a finding; the experience survey of people who know the field, which generates hypotheses and never conclusions because experience reports the memorable rather than the typical; and the analysis of insight-stimulating instances, selected purposively.
It produces: a defined problem; a testable hypothesis; the categories and vocabulary the instrument will use; an operational definition; and a judgment about feasibility.
It must not produce: a conclusion, a percentage, or a recommendation resting on it alone.
It is flexible by design but not unrecorded: whom, when, what was asked and why the approach changed, because the methodology chapter must describe it.
The usual shape in an unmeasured field: exploratory phase then descriptive phase, with the dissertation saying which produced what.
Test yourself
1. What is the purpose of an exploratory design, and what is its product? To gain familiarity with a little known subject, clarify its concepts and formulate the problem and hypotheses, rather than to test anything. Its products are a defined problem, a testable hypothesis, the categories and vocabulary the later instrument will use, an operational definition, and a realistic judgment about access and feasibility.
2. Name the three classical methods and give the caution attaching to the second. The survey of existing literature; the experience survey of persons familiar with the field; and the analysis of selected insight-stimulating instances. The caution on the experience survey is that people with experience report what was memorable rather than what is typical, so it generates hypotheses and can never support a conclusion.
3. What may an exploratory study never produce? A conclusion, a percentage, or a recommendation resting on it alone, because its samples are purposive, its instruments unstructured and its data not comparable.
4. If the design is meant to change, what discipline still applies? Everything must be recorded: whom the researcher spoke to, when, what was asked and why the approach was changed. The methodology chapter has to describe the exploratory phase, and an account saying only that the researcher spoke to some people is worthless.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.