Showing papers on "Unobtrusive research published in 2012"

Social Research: A Practical Introduction

Abstract: Social Research: A Practical Introduction by Bruce Curtis and Cate Curtis (2011) (London: Sage 293 pp. ISBN 978-1-84787-475-7) The book introduces an ambitious number of research approaches to undergraduate students from a range of social science disciplines. It offers an overview of how social scientists conduct research and while intended to be read as a whole, the eleven substantive chapters are also self-contained. The independence of the chapters hinges on the first chapter which provides an important conceptual framework. One of the strengths of the book is its breadth with coverage of eleven different approaches, supported with a useful glossary of key terms. The chapters cover interviews, life histories, ethnography, focus groups, surveys, experimentation, unobtrusive research, content analysis, secondary research, semiotics and autoethnography. While such diverse methods could appear haphazard and disorganised the authors have successfully integrated the topics according to a number of conceptual themes systematically applied to each chapter. The emphasis on getting started is a strong point, but this comes at the cost of omitting the important steps involving analysis and interpretation. Aspects of planning research and preliminary considerations are well catered for, but this tapers off after the point of data collection leaving little or no guidance on analysis and interpretation of results. Tellingly, "interpretation" fails to appear in the index. The conceptual framework around which the individual approaches are organised and assessed include the degree of interaction between researcher and participant, whether cases or variables are of primary interest, whether induction or deduction is most appropriate, epistemological positioning, issues of reliability and validity, and whether analytic framing is fixed or fluid. The chapters are sequenced according to the degree of interaction, with the early chapters covering approaches requiring more intense and direct interaction between the researcher and participants. Interviews are the most interactive, surveys only require superficial interaction and interaction in experiments is highly prescribed and not collaborative. The later chapters do not involve interaction at all since these approaches do not involve participants. Based on the claim that the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research is artificial since most methods employ features of both, the text applies the distinction between cases and variables. This divide works well, especially for the extremes with, for example, life history research focussing on cases and experimentation focussing on variables. Cases and variables are closely associated with the basic science undertaken with cases favouring inductive research and variables being linked to hypothesis testing. The three epistemological frames outlined are positivism, social realism and social constructivism. These positions sit across the realism/ relativism divide and some readers will align the third of these with social constructionism. On page 13 the claim is made that "Doing good science is about the rigour of the research, and its two most important measures are reliability and validity." These features are understood in psychology as important psychometric properties indexing the consistency and accuracy of the operationalization and measurement of variables, but suggesting they are the most important measures of rigour undersells the wider meaning of that concept. Perhaps it would have been useful to have explored rigour more fully thereby placing reliability and validity into a broader research framework. Fixed and fluid research framings assess the level of procedural flexibility in conducting the research. For experiments the framing is fixed, while for interviews have more fluidity. The introductory chapter concludes with a useful and comprehensive section outlining ethical issues researchers need to show awareness of when working with human subjects. …

Unobtrusive Marketing Research Methods: An Overview

Abstract: Still, most marketing and consumer behavior research is based on self reports from respondents. Subjects are asked to tell researchers about their opinions, intentions and purchase behavior. The advantage of self reports is that they are quick, easy and in most cases fairly reliable. However, research has shown that in some cases results based on self reports may be unreliable and/or invalid. In cases of low involvement and when sensitive topics are involved respondents’ answers may be biased due to back- and forwards telescoping, under- and over-reporting etc. In such cases the researcher may look for alternative ways of data collection. In this regard unobtrusive methods appear as a promising and underestimated alternative research technique. The paper shows how unobtrusive methods can be used for analyzing a selection of marketing research problems.

Public Responses to Violence in Quebec Junior Hockey: An Unobtrusive Analysis of the Patrice Cormier-Mikael Tam Incident

Abstract: Abstract While much is known about how players perceive violence in Canadian sport, little research has been conducted on public perceptions of this violence. This paper provides a preliminary enquiry into how the public perceives acts of excessive violence in Canadian ice hockey through an unobtrusive analysis of 923 responses posted electronically on an internet site following a media article pertaining to a single violent act. The online media article describes an incident involving a Quebec Junior Hockey League (QJHL) player, Patrice Cormier, elbowing an opposing player, Mikael Tam, in the head causing physical injuries. Using open coding, the responses to this article are analyzed.