POLI 2P80 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Toronto Star, Rob Ford, Content Analysis
4 Dec 2015
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Survey research, including interviews can be considered reactive. The research is considered reactive because there is an interchange between the subject and the researcher. The subject is aware that their behaviour or responses are being analyzed. Reactive research has many strengths, but it also has many shortcomings: Problems of meaning what does it mean to be politically active , may vary from researcher to subject, and from subject-to-subject. Problems of memory recollection of events is not easy, especially from distant past. Social desirability people likely to give answers that reflect positively on them. Participants, documents, objects are unaware that they are being studies and as a result cannot try to impress the researcher. There is no real interchange between researcher and subject. The analysis occurs after the fact, but the responses occur in real time (i. e. newspaper articles from 1993 elections vs. surveying people about their political attitudes in 1993)
