Unobtrusive Methods of Social Research

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Unobtrusive Methods of Social Research
Lecture by
Dr Christopher Kollmeyer

• Sociology 3522
• 7 Feb. 2008

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Reactive Measurement Effect(aka reactivity)

• A problem encountered in ethnography, controlled
  social experiments, and survey research in which
  the subjects awareness of being studied distorts
  his or her behaviour.
• Example Research on sexual norms
• Lewontin, Richard. 1995. Sex, Lies, and Social
  Science. New York Review of Books Vol 42, N 7.
• http//www.ssc.wisc.edu/skhan/Spring202007/Readi
  ngs/lewontin.pdf

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Overcoming the Reactive Effect

• Ethnography ? Habituation
• Survey research ? Control questions
• Unobtrusive Research Methods
• Use documents as sources of data
• Discourse or Frame Analysis (Qualitative)
• Content Analysis (Quantitative)

Or
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Content Analysis

• General Definition
• Research technique that systematically
  transforms qualitative aspects of documents and
  texts into quantitative data.
• Recent Example
• Jackson, Michelle. 2007. How far merit
  selection? Social stratification and the labour
  market. British Journal of Sociology 58(3)
  367-390.

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How far merit selection? Social stratification
and the labour market.

• Research question Are jobs allocated by merit
  (i.e. educational qualifications) or by ascribed
  qualities (i.e. social skills personality)?
• Data 5,021 job adverts in British newspapers.
• Analysis Code data for (1) type of job (six
  categories) and (2) desired qualifications of
  applicant (six categories).
• Findings Lower-status jobs most often emphasized
  ascribed qualities, but many high-status jobs did
  too.
• http//www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j
  .1468-4446.2007.00156.x

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Another ExampleKollmeyer, Christopher. 2004.
Corporate Interests How the News Media Portray
the Economy. Social Problems 51(3)432-452.

• Research Question Are liberal papers in the US
  really liberal on economic issues?
• Data All articles in the LA Times about the
  economy from 1997-1998. Yielded 201 articles.
• Analysis Coded all articles for
• objective criteria (such as number of words)
• appraisal of the economys performance (good,
  bad, mixed)
• people affected by event covered in story (such
  as corporations, workers, economy as a whole,
  etc).
• Findings http//www.abdn.ac.uk/sociology/notes05/
  Level3/SO3522/Week20220Thursday20(example).pdf

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Content Analysis

• Advantages
• Unobtrusive ? no reactive effect
• Transparent ? replication is possible
• Flexible ? historical or cross-national search is
  possible.
• Access elite groups