Vanguardia Program

Video lecture #6
Name: Christian Coronel Tenesaca

From the different types of exploratory research methods, select one method
which, according to you, would be more useful in your discipline. Explain why.
It is sometimes said that exploratory research and its methods are more suited
to the social sciences and humanities than to the natural sciences; do you
agree? Are there some approaches that are more suited to explore an area for
the natural sciences?

I am a student of civil engineering so the methods of exploratory research that best

suit in my field could be The Case Study and Critical Incidents. But the one that I
think is most useful is the Case Study, because basically what it does is a
comparison of different situations, products or as the name says, the cases that can
be presented in a research.

In civil engineering this can be observed when designing any kind of structure, taking
in count several parameters in order to get different solutions. For example, if the
safety of the structure is prioritized, a very expensive structure can be obtained. If
the economy is prioritized, a structure with less safety can be obtained, in many
cases. It is for this reason that this method seems a good option for engineering
because it allows us to contrast the different solution options we have and choose
the best one for the project or research.

It is clear that most of the exploratory methods that are shown in the lecture are more
applicable for social sciences and humanities, because the majority is based either
on surveys or interviews for the collection of data and its subsequent analysis.

I believe that a correct approach for an analysis in the natural sciences area can be:
field tests, measurements of parameters in the study area. Then it can be analyzed
in a better way, than only by surveys or interviews that can be very variable.