ABSTRACT
The procedures described will be loose and unspecific because of my emphasis on the diversity of research types and methods. The following broad discussion of approaching a research problem is intended mainly as a checklist for doing research. It may also be valuable as a checklist in analyzing the research reports done by others. Sometimes the translation into a functional relationship is a simple matter of finding empirical “proxies” to stand for the theoretical concepts and of deciding which variable to consider dependent and which to consider independent. The striking resemblances between military intelligence and empirical scientific research is that both profit from the use of multiple methods. An advantage of research that tests a theory is that the theory often suggests a precise hypothesis that can be tested empirically on neatly defined variables. Advertising-effectiveness researchers have an especially wide armamentarium, and it takes good judgment to pick the method that will yield much information at little expense.
