SSCI 2920U Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Content Analysis, Ethnography, Google Maps
Document Summary
Unobtrusive methods: research methods that do not involve interaction between researcher & participants. The researcher amasses data by collecting and analyzing materials that already exist. Unobtrusive methods are often used in conjunction with other more interactive methods. Almost anything that has been created or modified by people can be a source of data. Researchers who engage in unobtrusive research understand that cultural artifacts contain meaning on two levels: Qualitative researchers focus on latent content when they do content analysis. E. g. , reinharz (1992) list of cultural artifacts used by feminist research. Kids clothing (difference between girls and guys) Analyzing pre-existing documents is important for understanding historical and contemporary society. We can learn much about the people who created a document by analyzing what they chose to represent in their creation. In highly literate societies, written texts provide particularly telling windows into social worlds.