WEEK 12 unobtrusive research

what is unobtrusive research?

studying social behaviour without affecting it

what is an example of unobtrustive research using existing statistics?

to research job insecurity, use existing unemployment statistics and compare your findings to existing statistics

what was durkheims study?

seeing why people committed suicide. used an unobtrusive approach by analyzing existing statistics to see if they relate to suicide rates (weather, gender, age, politics)

what did durkheims study find?

- suicide rates vary with breaches in social equilibrium (stability/integration)

- suicide rates are higher in protestant countries

what are 4 types of data sets?

1. canadian general social survey

2. canadian community health survey

3. labour force survey

4. canadian census

what is a content analysis?

studying culture and human communication through books, magazines, websites, art, court records, newspaper

what is the process of content analysis

1. decide what to observe

2. select 2+ concepts

3. operationalize concepts

4. record observations

5. analyze data

6. summarize findings and relate it to a theory

what is an example of a content analysis?

if we want to see if there is a difference between men and women portrayed as doctors on TV programs, the unit of analysis would be the TV program

what are the 2 types of coding content?

1. manifest content

2. latent content

what is manifest content?

concrete terms like how many times something happens

what is latent content?

the underlying meaning of the content

here is an example:

researchers examined the meanings attached to race in food commercials

how would we use manifest and latent content?

manifest: seeing 87% of commercial actors for food are white, they're more often in whole food commercials, while black people are more often in fast food commercials

latent: misrepresentation of black people as blue collar workers, white people are seen as more favourably presented

what is the strength of content analysis 3?

1. cheap/not time consuming

2. easy to repeat

3. cross-sectional and longitudinal research can be done with media

what are the 2 weaknesses of content analysis?

1. limited to examining media that can be biased

2. depending on the coding, there can be issues with reliability and validity