as on other items, technigue, which is important for the credibility of the
whole, may triumph over other considerations --- which it should not.

The important point above, therefore, is that the geometric increase
in possible ways of solving problems, getting answers and testing hypotheses,
itself may help to obscure the lesser preoccupation with finding problems,

framing guestions and generating hypotheses in the first place.

Choosing Appropriate Research Strategies

Another baffling item at the outset is that one eventually encounters
the categorization of diverse research strategies. This refers to descrip-
tive, analytical, experimental, exploratory, evaluative, survey, comparative,
field, laboratory, normative and so on.

The positive aspect is that it might be critically important, productive
and saving in time and emotional energy to appreciate a range of possibilities.
That is to learn which may be appropriate for given projects as well as the
strengths, the limitations and the subseguent problems that accompany each.

For example, experimental and laboratory research may be internally
valid for that experiment but not externally valid when transferred to a
non-laboratory situation. Field and survey work may have more external cre-
dibility in the population from which the data were derived but provide for
less control of the variables, less possibility of inferring cause and effect
and less certainty in knowing why findings fell as they did. Exploratory
studies suggest insufficient knowledge to formulate testable hypotheses at the
start and therefore the promise of providing them at the close. Too often
chosen without a sense of the rigor entailed, exploratory work ideally should
be pursued only by those who can build in the rigor necessary for subseguent
effort. For evaluative research of any character, the choice of criteria is

likely to loom as a central issue. For analytical work, the continuing

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