The Exploratory or Formulative Design

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.