POLSCI 3N06 Lecture 10: Political Science 3N06 2015 Lecture 10a Unobtrusive methods
5 Dec 2015
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Political science 3n06 2015 lecture 10a unobtrusive methods. All of the methods that we have looked at thus far (experiment, surveys, interviews, field work) require an intrusion into the lives of those that we want to observe. What we observe from the outside not the behaviour as it happens but after the fact. This intrusion can (to a greater or lesser degree) affect what we observe. However, there are research methods that can avoid inducing these types of reactivity effects. Unobtrusive research studies the residues and traces of human activity archives, both physical and literary. This can provide data that is non-reactive (at least non-reactive towards you the researcher) since: it was not produced with you or your research purposes in mind, it took place before you arrived on the scene. Of course there are some limitations to the data that must be born in mind.
