Sippi Lovin'

Maintaining a blog while attending graduate school is often times a difficult thing to do, if for no other reason than, I feel guilty spending time away from other more productive endeavors (ie. studying). Repercussions of the aforementioned circumstances are either poorly constructed postings or no postings. You've all witnessed both.

Benjamin, I had intended to operationally define correlational research and offer its alternative, but failed to do so as time wore on. Correlational research investigates the relationship between variables, whereas experimental research involves the manipulation of research conditions, allowing us to form conclusions about cause and fact. Correlational research provides us with useful information on what, if not why, people do, think, and feel. These studies are typically easier to conduct and involve observation, surveying/testing, and reading and thinking. This is a methodology commonly employed by social scientists when an experiment can't be carried out for ethical or practical reasons. Its major downfall is that they can't establish causality between the variables being investigated.