Objectives of Research

Objectives of Research

The social sciences, which deal with human behavior in its social and cultural aspects, include the following discipline: economics, political science, rural development, and sociology; social and cultural anthropology, social psychology, and social and economic geography; those areas of education that deal with the social context of learning and the relation of the school of social order.

However, the emphasis upon research in the social sciences has become almost transcending within recent decades. This situation is not at all different from that which prevails in the physical sciences and the professions in this age.

Objectives differ with the nature of studies and goals to be attained. Some research studies aim to gather descriptive data, or explanatory data, or data from which theoretical constructs could be deduced, or data that promote administrative changes or comparisons.

1. Development of knowledge
Every science tries to collect a systematized body of knowledge about the branch or the subject matter that it studies. For this, it applies the research as a method. The main objective of the research is to add to the knowledge. Similarly, social research is an organized and scientific effort to acquire further knowledge about social phenomena and social facts.

2. Scientific study of social life
Social research is an attempt to acquire scientific knowledge about social phenomena and social facts. The researcher makes the study of the collective process, social change, social structure, social processes, etc. Apart from it, it asks study of human behavior and collects data about various aspects of the social life of man, and formulates laws in this regard

3. Welfare of humanity
No scientist or researcher makes a study only for the sake of study. He has to direct his study to some higher aim, which invariably is "welfare of humanity." To promote the welfare of humanity by the results of the investigation may be the ultimate aim of one scientist. Another may set as his goal the achievement of material security and social prestige for himself. A third may find scientific inquiring an end itself, in the sense that the satisfaction he derives from his scientific work is a reason enough for his engaging in it.

4. Classification of fact
Social research aims to clarify facts. In a given universe of discourse to find the specific determined sequences and interrelationship of facts and their social setting. To develop a series of clear-cut concepts and to examine the old concepts which are to define social life.

5. Social control and prediction
Through social research, one makes, etc. It also finds out new facts and verifies the old facts on the basis of the touchstone or tests applied to old facts. It is in fact the scientific method for the study of social life in a scientific manner. It also studies the dynamics of social relationships and social phenomenon.