Unobtrusive Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
78 Summary
Chapter XIII focused on unobtrusive research, which enables researchers to gather data without interfering or interacting with the research subjects. Unobtrusive methods can be utilized in both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Overall, it is a cost-effective manner of undertaking research, however, it can suffer from validity issues, data availability and the challenge of accounting for the social context in which the data was produced.
Key Takeaways
- Unobtrusive research refers to methods of collecting data that do not interfere with the subjects under study (because these methods are not obtrusive). It is a cost-effective way to do research and more forgiving of mistakes; however, there can be potential problems with validity, limitations in the data availability, and difficulty in accounting for social context.
- The Hawthorne effect, which is the effect of the researchers on the participants, is not a concern with unobtrusive measures because researchers do not interact directly with their research participants.
- Primary data sources are original data sources, whereas secondary data sources are those that have already been analyzed.
- Physical traces are those materials that are left by humans and the material artifacts that tell us something about their beliefs, values, or norms.
- There are two types of physical trace materials. Erosion refers to the wearing away of or removal of material because of a physical activity (e.g. a worn foot path). On the other hand, accretion is the building up of material because of physical activity (e.g. a pile of garbage).
- Archival measures are hard copy documents or records, including written or taped-recorded material, photographs, newspaper, books, magazines, diaries, and letters. Webpages are also a source of archival measures and can include documents, images, videos, and audio files in addition to written materials.
- Stability is an issue in unobtrusive research when the results of coding by the same person vary across different time period.
- Reproducibility means that one coder’s results are the same to other coders’ results for the same text.
- Accuracy refers to the extent to which one’s coding procedures correspond to some preexisting standard.
- Ethnomethodologists study everyday reality and how people produce those realities through their presentations of self and interactions with others.
- Conversation analysis is considered a more formal ethnomethodological approach. If focuses specifically on the dynamics of talk.
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