SOCI 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Mockumentary, Content Analysis, Research Question

• School: McGill University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 211
• Professor: Alexandre Miltsov

Document Summary

Lecture plan: unobtrusive research: definition, strengths & weaknesses, researcher bias, the hawthorne effect, content analysis, primary & secondary sources, material artifacts, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, publicly available data, stability, reproducibility, accuracy. Unobtrusive research: what is it and when to use it: unobtrusive research: methods of collecting data that don"t interfere with the subjects under study- you do not engage with them, used for both qualitative and quantitative research. A couple of important concepts: researcher bias: bias that occurs when the preconceptions of a researcher either intentionally or, more typically, unintentionally shape her or his findings. With unobtrusive research, our lack of presence does not affect our findings. Content analysis continued: data sources represent, primary sources: original sources of data that have not already been analyzed - Reliability in unobtrusive research: stability refers to the extent to which the results of coding vary across different time periods.