It can include techniques, such as: According to Stebbins (2001) "Social Science exploration is a broad-ranging, purposive, systematic prearranged undertaking designed to maximize the discovery of generalizations leading to description and understanding".
[1] His influential book argues that exploratory research should not use confirmatory mechanisms like hypotheses.
Casula, Rangarajan and Shields (2020) argue that exploratory research should not be limited to inductive approaches.
They propose the working hypothesis is a useful framework for deductive exploratory research that should be part of the social scientist's tool bag.
Therefore, a need for an exploratory research may be realized and instituted to gain experience that may help in formulating a relevant hypothesis for more definite investigation.
Social 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.
Earl Babbie identifies three purposes of social-science research: exploratory, descriptive and explanatory.