Applied Research

Applied research refers to the use of social scienceinquiry methods in situations where generalizabilitymay be limited. Such research provides answers toquestions dealing with a delimited group of persons, behaviors, or outcomes. Applied research contrastswith basic research, which has the purpose of addressing fundamental questions with wide generalizability; for example, testing a hypothesis derived from atheory in economics. Both applied and basic researchers can use any of the social science research methods, such as the survey, experimental, and qualitativemethods. Differences between the research roles donot relate to methods of inquiry; they relate to the purposes of the investigation. Applied researchers focuson concrete and practical problems; basic researchersfocus on problems that are more abstract and lesslikely to have immediate application.

Evaluation provides many avenues for appliedresearch. For example, an evaluator might perform aneeds assessment to determine whether a programaimed at a particular group of clients should be plannedand implemented. A community psychologist whosurveys directors of homeless shelters to assess theneed for a substance abuse counseling program isperforming applied research. The range of generaliz-ability is limited to the community being surveyed. The problem being addressed is practical, not theoretical. Formative evaluation activities involve appliedresearch almost exclusively. For example, a director ofcorporate training might use methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and focus groups to reviseand refine instructional materials. The purpose of theresearch is to obtain feedback about which aspects ofthe material should be changed for specific users.

An evaluation can sometimes have dimensions ofboth applied and basic research. For example, a summative evaluation can have both practical uses andimplications for theory. A demonstration project onpreschool education could simultaneously reveal themerit of the project and test a theory about the impactof instructional activities on the school readiness of 4-year-olds. Although evaluation is associated morewith applied research than with basic research, thelatter has strongly influenced some evaluation frame-works. A prime example is theory-driven evaluation, which focuses on structuring the evaluation to testwhether predicted relationships among variablesare verified by the program. An evaluator using thisapproach might employ statistical models, such aspath analysis, that require a set of hypothesized relationships to be tested with empirical data derived fromprogram participants.