POLSCI 3N06 Lecture Notes - Pottery Of Ancient Greece, Observational Error
23 Nov 2013
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Document Summary
Political science 3n06 2013 lecture 9a unobtrusive methods. Common problem to all of the previous methods that were looked at; all of the methods require the researcher to interact, and every single one of those methods do not allow us to view the phenomenon from the outside; 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. This intrusion can (to a greater or lesser degree) affect what we observe. There are problems of reactivity: interviewing different sorts of reactivity; Also reactionary affects associated with the physical characteristics of the researcher; situation: question; gender; ethnicity; etc, might prompt the subject to say things that they would not say in another. However, there are research methods that can avoid inducing these types of reactivity effects. Methods that study society indirectly or unobtrusively.
