Question

Choose only 3 of the 5 questions below and prepare a response approximately 3 pages long for each one. Double space your writing and use default margins and font size. Cite all sources using APA formatting. Points will be taken off for factual errors, not answering the question, sloppy citing and plagiarism, use of another student's work, reuse of a prior assignment, misspelling, grammatical errors, and late submissions. Be sure to identify by number the questions you are answering. Please proof read your work and submit it on time. 1. Briefly describe a descriptive research project, explanatory research project, and an evaluation research project that would examine youth violence. Clearly identify the main focus of each research project. exploratory research project, an an

Answer 1

Descriptive research Research in which phenomena are defined and described.

Exploratory research Research in which social phenomena are investigated without a priory expectations, in order to develop explanations of them.

Explanatory research Research that seeks to identify causes and/or effects of social phenomena.

Evaluation research Research about social programs or interventions.

Descriptive research. Defining and describing social phenomena of interest is a part of almost any research investigation, but descriptive research is the primary focus of many studies of youth crime and violence. Some of the central questions used in these studies were “How many people are victims of youth violence?” “How many youth are offenders?” “What are the most common crimes committed by youthful offenders?” and “How many youth are arrested and incarcerated each year for crime?” Measurement and sampling are central concerns in descriptive research.

Exploratory research. Exploratory research seeks to find out how people get along in the setting under question, what meanings they give to their actions, and what issues concern them. The goal is to answer the question “What is going on here?” and to investigate social phenomena without expectations. This purpose is associated with the use of methods that capture large amounts of relatively unstructured information. For example, researchers investigating the emergence of youth gangs in the 1980s were encountering a phenomenon with which they had no direct experience. Thus, an early goal was to find out what it was like to be a gang member and how gang members made sense of their situation. Exploratory research like this frequently involves qualitative methods.

Explanatory research. Many people consider explanation to be the premier goal of any science. Explanatory research seeks to identify causes and effects of social phenomena, to predict how one phenomenon will change or vary in response to variation in some other phenomenon. Researchers adopted explanation as a goal when they began to ask such questions as “Why do people become offenders?” and “Does the unemployment rate influence the frequency of youth crime?” Methods with which to identify causes and effects are the focus..

Evaluation research. Evaluation research seeks to determine the effects of a social program or other types of intervention. It is a type of explanatory research because it deals with cause and effect. However, evaluation research differs from other forms of explanatory research because evaluation research considers the implementation and effects of social policies and programs. These issues may not be relevant in other types of explanatory research. The increase of youth violence in the 1990s spawned many new government programs and, with them, evaluation research to assess the impact of these programs.