Connection	Research Method	Description	Page
	Basic Research	Research designed to advance fundamental knowledge about how the world works and build/test theoretical explanations by focusing on the “why” question. The scientific community is its primary audience.	26
	Applied Research	Research designed to offer practical solutions to a concrete problem or address the immediate and specific needs of clinicians or practitioners	27
Applied RM	Evaluation Research	Applied research in which one tries to determine how well a program or policy is working or reaching its goals and objectives	28
Applied RM	Action Research	Applied research in which the primary goal is to facilitate social change or bring about a value-oriented political-social goal	30
Action RM	Participatory Action Research	Action research in which the research participants actively help design and conduct the research study. It emphasizes democratizing knowledge-creation and engaging in collective action and it assumes that political knowledge emerges from participating in research.	30
Applied RM	Social impact assessment	Applied research that documents the likely consequences for various areas of social life if a major new change is introduced into a community.	31
Tool in applied RM	Needs assessment	An applied research tool that gathers descriptive information about a need, issue, or concern, including its magnitude, scope, and severity.	33
Tool in applied RM	Cost-benefit analysis	An applied research tool economists developed in which a monetary value is assigned to the inputs and outcomes of a process and then the researcher examines the balance between them.	34
Basic RM or Applied RM	Instrumental Knowledge	Knowledge narrowly focused to answer a basic or applied research question, issue, or concern with an outcome or task-oriented orientation.	36
Basic RM or Applied RM	Reflexive Knowledge	Knowledge used to broadly examine the assumptions, context, and moral-value positions of basic or applied social research, including the research process itself and the implications of what is learned	36
	Commissioned Research	Research funded and conducted at the behest of someone other than the researcher; the person conducting the study often has limited control over the research question, methods of a study, and presentation of results.	37
Qualitative	Exploratory Research	Research whose primary purpose is to examine a little understood issue or phenomenon and to develop preliminary ideas about it and move toward refined research questions.	38
Qualitative Quantitative	Descriptive Research	Research in which the primary purpose is to “paint a picture” using words or numbers and to present a profile, a classification of types, or an outline of steps to answer questions such as who, when, where, and how.	38
Qualitative	Explanatory Research	Research whose primary purpose is to explain why events occur and to build, elaborate, extent, or test theory.	40
Qualitative	Case-study Research	Research that is an in-depth examination of an amount of information about very few units or cases for one period or across multiple periods of time.	42
Quantitative	Across-Case Research	Compares select features across numerous cases (30-3,000).	43
Exploratory, Descr., Exp.	Cross-sectional Research	Any research that examines information on many cases at one point in time.	44
Exploratory, Descr., Exp.	Longitudinal Research	Any research that examines information from many units or cases across more than one point in time.	44
Descriptive	Time-series Research	Longitudinal research in which information can be about different cases or people in each of several time periods.	44
Longitudinal	Panel Study	Longitudinal research in which information is about the identical cases or people in each of several time periods.	45
Longitudinal	Cohort study	Longitudinal research that traces information about a category of cases or people who shared a common experience at one time period across subsequent time periods.	46
Explanatory, Quantitative	Experimental Research	Research in which the researcher manipulates conditions for some research participants but not others and then compares group responses to see whether doing so made a difference.	47
Quantitative	Survey Research	Quantitative research in which the researcher systematically asks a large number of people the same questions and then records their answers.	49
Quantitative	Nonreactive Research	Research methods in which people are not aware of being studied.	49
Quantitative	Content Analysis	Research in which the content of a communication medium is systematically recorded and analyzed.	49
Quantitative	Existing Statistics Research	Research in which one re-examines and statistically analyzes quantitative data that have been gathered by government agencies or other organizations.	49
Qualitative	Field Research	Qualitative research in which the researcher directly observes and records notes on people in a natural setting for an extended period of time.	51
Qualitative	Historical-compa-rative Research	Qualitative research in which the researcher examines data on events and conditions in the historical past and/or in different societies.	52

Excerpted from Neumann (2011, pp. 26-52).