The significance of research in social and business sciences

According to a famous Hudson Maxim, “All progress is born of inquiry. Doubt is often better than overconfidence, for it leads to inquiry, and inquiry leads to invention”. It brings out the significance of research, increased amounts of which make progress possible. Research encourages scientific and inductive thinking, besides promoting the development of logical habits of thinking and organization. 

The role of research in applied economics in the context of an economic or business is greatly increasing in modern times. The increasingly complex nature of government and business has raised the use of research in solving operational problems. Research assumes a significant role in the formulation of economic policy, for both the government and business. It provides the basis for almost all government policies of an economic system. Government budget formulation, for example, depends particularly on the analysis of the needs and desires of the people, and the availability of revenues, which requires research. Research helps to formulate alternative policies, in addition to examining the consequences of these alternatives. Thus, research also facilitates the decision making of policy-makers, although in itself it is not a part of research. In the process, research also helps in the proper allocation of a country’s scare resource. Research is also necessary for collecting information on the social and economic structure of an economy to understand the process of change occurring in the country. Collection of statistical information though not a routine task, involves various research problems. Therefore, a large staff of research technicians or experts are engaged by the government these days to undertake this work. Thus, research as a tool of government economic policy formulation involves three distinct stages of operation which are as follows:

• Investigation of economic structure through continual compilation of facts;
• Diagnoses of events that are taking place and the analysis of the forces underlying them; and;
• The prognosis, i.e., the prediction of future developments. 

Research also assumes a significant role in solving various operational and planning problems associated with business and industry. In several ways, operations research, market research, and motivational research are vital and their results assist in taking business decisions. Market research refers to the investigation of the structure and development of a market for the formulation of efficient policies relating to purchases, production and sales. Operational research relates to the application of logical, mathematical, and analytical techniques to find solutions to business problems such as cost minimization or profit maximization, or the optimization problems. Motivational research helps to determine why people behave in the manner they do with respect to market characteristics. More specifically, it is concerned with the analyzing the motivations underlying consumer behavior. All these researches are very useful for business and industry, which are responsible for business decision making.

Research is equally important to social scientist for analyzing social relationships and seeking explanations to various social problems. It gives the intellectual satisfaction of knowing things for the sake of knowledge. It also possesses practical utility for the social scientist to gain knowledge so as to be able to do something better or in a more efficient manner. Thus, research in the social sciences is concerned with both knowledge for its own sake, and knowledge of what it can contribute to solve practical problems.