Descriptive Research

The main function of descriptive research is studying the existing things on the basis of "as and where they are". In other words, descriptive research studies things in their natural settings with taking all the related variables on board, and need not isolate one or two variables for the purpose of the study. So, it doesn’t need any artificial or controlled environment for its operations. In descriptive research, the researcher has no controlled over variables being studied, but he only studies them. It is usually used for describing, explaining or validating things. Descriptive research may be either quantitative or qualitative. And sometimes it may appear in a blended form utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. As mentioned above, the sole purpose of descriptive research is to just describe or explain a problem or situation, or validate a phenomenon. It means that it is neither interested in knowing the causal relationship between variables, nor it wants to make any prediction on the basis of collected data. In descriptive research we normally use descriptive statistics (mean, median, and mode) and frequency distributions for analyzing and presentation of data.

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