Methods of Research

Price Scientist conducts research on a daily basis. The purpose of this research is exploration, description, explanation, and application. In the area of criminal Justice things are getting researched all of the time. Take murder for example, the police have to explore to find out what actually happened. They have to describe the events leading up the the murder. They have to explain the facts to try and come up with a suspect. Finally, they have to use the process of application to put it all together so they can make an arrest.
When using the different purposes of research it Is important to examine each purpose by Itself because each purpose has Its own different aspect when It comes to research design. The exploration stage Is the first stage that researchers begin with when using research methods. “This stage is typically done for three purposes: to satisfy the researcher does curiosity and desires for better understand, to test the feasibility of undertaking a more extensive study, and to develop the methods to be employed in any subsequent studies. (Grossman, 2014) A researcher will use the exploration take of research when they want to find out about something that there is little known about. Take drugs for example; let’s say a researcher wants to find out how bad the drug problem is in the United States. There are a couple categories that a researcher may want to explore. Such as; “how many were arrested for drug sales or possession each year and how many hours per day do drug dealers work and how much do they make? ” (Misfield & Babble, 2009) The next purpose of research is description. The researcher explores and then describes what they explored.
For example; the U. S. Census, “the goal of the census Is to describe accurately and precisely several characteristics of the U. S. Population, including race/ethnicity, age, sex, household size, and income. ” (Grossman, 2014) The description stage is widely used in the criminal Justice field. For example; it is used to describe a certain crime problem that a certain city or state may be having. It can be used to measure how much burglary is committed in the city of Joplin, Missouri. The descriptive stage is used to answer the questions what, when, where, and how something happened.

The third stage of research is the explanation stage. The explanation stage attempts to describe why something happened. The description and the explanation stages work together. The descriptive stage explains what happened the explanation stage explains why It happened. Take the burglary rate In Joplin the descriptive stage tells you how much burglary Is committed and the explanation stage will tell you why burglary is committed in Joplin. Application research: evaluation and policy and problem analysis. An example would be “determining whether a program designed to reduce burglary actually had the intended effect. (Maxwell & Babble, 2009) Criminal Justice organizations gather all their research from exploration, description, and explanation in the application process to come up with a conclusion for all their research. There are four different stages of research that the criminal Justice organizations use to find answers to things that are unknown and also to find out the what, where, when how, and why things happen. Most researches that are done contain all four stages of research. For example take auto theft. A researcher would use the exploration stage to learn about the case.