Step 2: Plan a Research Design Exploratory Research: research that seeks to discover ideas and insights and to generate hypotheses Descriptive research: research that studies how often something occurs or what if any relationship exists between two variables Causal researchStep 2: Plan a Research Design Exploratory Research: research that seeks to discover ideas and insights and to generate hypotheses Descriptive Research: research that studies how often something occurs, or what if any relationship exists between two variables Causal Research: