SOCIAL RESEARCH– Social research is the study of social trends, dynamics and principles that exist between individuals and within societies. Professionals perform social research to better understand the social factors that motivate and influence human beings and to analyze how and why humans interact with each other.
After they gather data, researchers analyze it to generate conclusions that relate to their research question. For example, social scientists may perform a primary social research study in which they observe how humans interact under stressful circumstances. Secondary research involves analyzing and generating conclusions from data that already exists. Researchers combine, organize and analyze information to generate new conclusions from preexisting data. For example, researchers may perform a secondary social research study that analyzes interviews from several studies of women before and after finding out they’re pregnant. Qualitative social research attempts to gather information through non-numerical means, such as observation and interviews. Researchers often conduct studies in a participant’s environment to increase trust and accuracy. Then, they analyze qualitative data by formulating themes from the observations and descriptions made during the research. For example, a social qualitative research study may involve observations and analysis of a single long-form interview of a death row inmate.