300 W6 Discussion

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Research with Nonreactive Measures

Chapter 8

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Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues about Social Life

• Non-reactive research = research techniques in which the people in the study are unaware that someone is gathering information or using it for research purposes.
• Four types of non-reactive research:
• Physical evidence analysis
• Content analysis
• Existing statistics analysis
• Secondary data analysis

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Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues about Social Life

• Unobtrusive measures = non-reactive research measures that do not intrude or disturb a person, so they are unaware of them.
• Limitations of Physical Evidence
• physical evidence measures are indirect
• possible privacy violation

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Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• Content Analysis
• Content analysis = A non-reactive technique for studying communication messages.
• Text = In content analysis it means anything written, visual, or spoken in a communication medium.
• Content analysis is useful for
• Large volumes of text
• Topics studied “at a distance”
• Content difficult to see with casual observation

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Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Measure and Code in Content Analysis
• Coding System = In content analysis a set of instructions or rules stating how text was systematically measured and converted into variables.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Measure and Code in Content Analysis
• What do you measure?  
• Direction
• Frequency
• Intensity 
• Space 
• Prominence

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Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Measure and Code in Content Analysis
• Coding, Validity, and Reliability
• Manifest coding = Content analysis coding in which you record information about the visible, surface content in a text.
• Latent coding = Coding in content analysis in which you look for the underlying, implicit meaning in the content of a text.
• Intercoder reliability = A measure of measurement consistency in content analysis when you have multiple coders.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Measure and Code in Content Analysis
• Coding, Validity, and Reliability
• Content Analysis with Visual Material

visual material communicates indirectly

visual images often contain mixed messages and operate at multiple levels of meaning

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Conduct Content Analysis Research
• Step 1. Formulate a Research Question
• Step 2. Identify the Text to Analyze
• Step 3. Decide on Units of Analysis
• Step 4. Draw a Sample

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Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• How to Conduct Content Analysis Research (cont)
• Step 5. Create a Coding System
• Step 6. Construct and Refine Categories
• Step 7. Code the Data onto Recording Sheets.
• Step 8. Data Analysis

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Revealing the Content Buried within Communication Messages

• Limitations of Content Analysis
• content analysis cannot:
• determine the truthfulness of an assertion
• evaluate aesthetic qualities
• interpret content significance
• reveal the intentions of the text’s creators
• determine the influence of a message on its receivers

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Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions

• Social Indicator = Any measure of social conditions or well-being that can used be used in policy decisions.
• Locating Data
• many diverse sources
• Statistical Abstract of the United States

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Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions

• Verifying Data Quality
• Existing statistics can be limited by

Missing Data

Reliability

Validity

Topic Knowledge

Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness = when statistical information is reported in a way that gives a false impression of its precision.

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Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions

• Verifying Data Quality (cont)
• Existing statistics can be limited by

Ecological Fallacy = mistaken interpretations that occur when you use data for a higher or bigger unit of analysis to examine a relationship among units at a lower or small unit of analysis

• Creative Thinking About Variables of Interest
• Standardization of Data
• Standardization = adjusting a measure by dividing it by a common base to make comparisons are possible.

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Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others

• Secondary Sources
• General Social Survey = A large-scale survey with many questions of a large national sample of adult Americans conducted almost every year. Data from it are made available to researchers at low or no cost.
• Limitations of Secondary Data Sources
• May lack data for your research question
• Validity
• Topic knowledge

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Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others

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Conducting Ethical NonReactive Research

• Protect people’s privacy
• Protect confidentiality of data