I am exploring a behavioral aspect of leadership in a context where studies are very scarce and the variables, factors, and causes are unmapped. while, there are previous theoretical and conceptual works on the subject matter but i feel if i restrict my findings to these theories which were constructed in a different social, cultural, and organizational contexts, this will distort the authenticity of my findings. So what i should do?
In the social sciences, research can be exploratory (or formulative), descriptive, and explanatory (or causal). Exploratory research is used when a topic or an issue is new, or when problems are at a preliminary stage, and so data is difficult to collect. To address research questions such as "what", "why", "when", and "how" in such cases, exploratory research must be flexible so one might better define problems, unearth meaning from scant data, and suggest hypotheses that provide insight into situations and pave the ground for more definite, future investigation. (Comparing, quantitative research aims to prove or disprove hypotheses so one might generalize the population at large with answers to research questions such as "how often" or "how many).
Because the goal of exploratory research is, sundrily, to investigate social phenomena without explicit expectations, learn what is going on, find out how people get along in the settings under question, or, say, discover what meanings people give to actions and what issues concern them, the methodology used to identify, select, process, and analyze information typically has to do with:
- Secondary research—which may involve reviewing available literature and/or data;
- Informal qualitative approaches—which may involve discussions with, say, consumers, employees, management, or competitors; and
- Formal qualitative research—which may involve in-depth interviews, focus groups, projective methods, case studies, or pilot studies.
I think that it is legitimate to first see what your data produces and then see how it compares to other studies.
In qualitative writing, I much prefer to use existing research as a conceptual framework, collect and analyze data for insights, and then go back and compare to other study findings. Always trying to shoehorn my findings into someone else's model might cause me to miss new things in my own data.
Ben Levin
Olivier Serrat Michael W. Marek
I am really grateful for your comments and insights. I found that very very helpful.
It solely depends upon your research objective. But the best it to use data taking theory as a base to substantiate your claim.I am writing qualitative papers using data mostly interviews from the target respondents.
I agree with what people have written above. Your research questions, developed out of the literature review, should drive your method. Qualitative methods are really useful for phenomena about which little is known (in the literature). Then, you can choose either an inductive (from the data) or a deductive (from the theory) approaches. Inductive approaches, like grounded theory, gather enormous amounts of data to see what new insights or explanations emerge. Deductive approaches examine the phenomenon to see how well it is explained by existing theories and explanations.
If you used a case study, for instance, you could state some propositions based on the theories you've found that were applied to other contexts and then gather data to see whether they apply to your new context. There are lots of ways to approach what you are investigating. Have fun!
Jeff Singfiel I'm using a case study approach; the question i raised here was due to the various perspectives and views of methods' scholars on the proper way to analyze qualitative data (inductive vs deductive or a mixture of the two; latent vs interpretative ..etc). I just wanted to make sure I'm on the right track.
My research questions are based and supported by previous literature and there are few studies on the issue I'm investigating but in different cultural and organizational settings.
As I have been involved in this research for more than 3 years and I know the context of my study and its peculiarities very well; I felt if i relied too much on the previous work, the findings will not reflect the real issue. And i believe that i took a middle ground in going about my analysis by focusing on the data and referring to the previous scholarly work in the same time.
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Exploratory research is conducted when an issue has not been studied before, therefore, it should be data-driven.