H9 Research Methods Flashcards
Unobtrusive observation
A way of studying people’s behaviour without directly interfering or influencing their actions. It involves observing individuals or groups in their natural settings without them being aware that they are being observed. The goal is to obtain accurate and unbiased information about people’s behaviour in real-life situations.
Manifest coding
A method used to analyse and categorise data in research or qualitative analysis. It involves identifying and labelling explicit or obvious content or behaviours in the data being examined. For example, if you are studying people’s opinion about a product, you would use manifest coding to look for specific words or phrases in reviews that directly express their thoughts, feelings or experiences with the product.
Latent coding
A method used to look for the underlying, implicit meaning buried in the content of a text. It tends to be less reliable than manifest coding, depending on a coder’s knowledge of language and social meaning. If manifest and latent coding agree, the final result is strengthened. If they disagree, you may want to re-examine the operational and theoretical definitions.
Intercoder reliability
Checking for consistency across coders: to do so, you ask coders to code the same text independently and then compare outcomes. You measure intercoder reliability with a statistical coefficient that tells the degree of consistency among coders.
Inferences
The intentions of those who created the texts or the effects of messages in the text on receivers. Content analysis only describes what is in the text and does not reveal these intentions.
Social indicators
Any measure of social well-being used in policy. Social indicators include measures of the following areas: population, family structure, housing, Social Security and Welfare, health and nutrition, public safety, etc.
Validity problems
Occur when:
1) Your theoretical definition does not match that of the organisation that collected the information;
2) When you use official statistics as a surrogate, as you cannot collect original data on the issue;
3) When you do not control how data is collected. Systematic errors in data collection, errors in organising and reporting information and errors in publishing information can all reduce measurement validity.
Reliability problems
Occurs when official definitions or the method of collecting information changes over time. Even if you learn of such changes, consistent measurement over time is impossible.
Ethical concerns in nonreactive research
Ethical concerns are not at the forefront of most nonreactive research because the people being studied are not directly involved. The primary ethical concern is the privacy and confidentiality of using information gathered by someone else.
Content analysis
A research technique for gathering and analysing the content of the text. The content refers to words, pictures, ideas, sounds or anything that communicates meaning or a message to people.
When is content analysis appropriate?
When the research question involves variables that are messages or symbols presented in text. For example, if you want to examine media content, such as newspapers, films or online articles, you can use content analysis to analyse the themes, messages, languages, imagery etc., allowing for insights into media representations, biases, or trends.
Nonreactive experiments
Experiments where people you study are unaware of the fact that they are being studied. Contrary to for example experiments and survey research, where people are aware off that fact.
