1. Unobtrusive Observational Methods
Researchers can learn about people’s behavior by looking at evidence of their past behavior.
These methods are called nonreactive, because people can not react to being observed because:
The researcher is looking at their past behavior using
Physical traces
Archival Records

2. Classification of Observational Methods
Direct Observation
Indirect (Unobtrusive) Observation
Observation without Intervention
Observation
with
Intervention
Physical Traces
Archival Records
Participant Observation
Structured Observation
Field
Experiment
Use traces
Natural
Controlled
Products
Running Record
Episodic Record
© 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

3. Two Unobtrusive Observational Methods
Physical traces are the remnants, fragments, and products of past behavior
Use Traces
Natural
Controlled
Products
Archival records are the public and private documents that describe the activities of individuals, institutions, governments, and other groups.

4. Physical Traces
Physical trace measures are obtained indirectly — people are not present when the data are collected
Two types of physical traces:
Use Traces
Evidence of use or nonuse
Measured in controlled or natural
Products
owned by individuals
produced by culture

5. Physical Traces: Use Traces
Use traces: Evidence that remains from the use or nonuse of an item.
Example of use: beverage containers in campus recycling bins (soda, juice, water)
What do these containers tell us about the health habits of college students?
Example of nonuse: books unopened
What does this tell us about study habits?
Example: accuracy of clock settings
What does it tell us about punctuality?

6. Physical Traces : Use Traces
Physical-use traces are also classified as either natural or controlled (planned)
Natural-use traces are produced without any intervention by the investigator.
Example: analyze the amount of highlighting in students’ textbooks to investigate which material is read.
What does this analysis tell us about students’ studying? About their learning of the material?

7. Physical Traces : Use Traces
Physical-use traces
Controlled-use traces are produced with some degree of intervention or manipulation by the investigator.
Example: Place tiny glue seals between pages of texts prior to their purchase. Analyze the textbooks at the end of the semester to determine which pages have been opened (i.e., unsealed).
What does this analysis tell us about students’ studying?

8. Physical Trace Measures: Problems and Limitations
Are physical traces valid measures of behavior?
Other inferences may be possible based on the physical evidence.
Verified through independent sources of evidence
Are there biases in physical traces?
Biases can exist in the manner physical traces are created or the manner in which they survive.
Answers to both these questions indicate we need multimethod approaches to understanding behavior.
When possible, researchers should obtain supplementary evidence.
To the extent that different measures of behavior agree (or converge), we can be more confident in our conclusions.

9. Physical Traces : Products
Products: Is the other category of physical trace
Creations, constructions, or other artifacts of earlier behavior
Example: Television programs such as Howdy Doody, Sesame Street, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, Power Rangers, Pokemon
What do children’s television programs tell us about our culture?

10. FIGURE 4.5 Many cultures have used tattoos and body piercings as a means of self-expression and group identification.

11. Physical Trace Research Example
Interest in studying behavior of college students
Specific Research Question:
how much do students’ use course material placed on closed reserve in the library?
Collect data using physical-trace with either
natural-use trace such as highlighting
And Or
controlled (planned) use trace such as glued pages
Products

12. Physical Trace Research Example
Archaeology
studies of past cultures through the material (physical) remains people left behind.
Artifacts “products” must be carefully removed for further analysis and study.
records—including photographs, drawings, and detailed notes—are made of all artifacts
“At Isampur, a quarry-cum-workshop site has been identified where all stages in the Acheulian tool manufacturing process at the raw material source”
Recent findings on the Acheulian of the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys, Karnataka, with special reference to the Isampur excavation and its dating.
K. Paddayya (2002) CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 83, NO. 5

13. Acheulean: tool industry characterized by roughly made hand-axes found at St. Acheul, France. This type of toolmaking occurred about mya.

14. Physical Trace Research Problems
Validity
Truthfulness of the evidence
Verify through independent evidence
Need Convergent evidence
Bias
In the way evidence is laid down
More Sprite then Coke cans in the trash because?
In the manner in which evidence survives over time
Amount of highlighting in a textbook

15. Crop Circles

16. Archival Records
Archival records are the public and private documents of individuals, institutions, governments, and other groups.
Running records (e.g., your transcript)
Episodic records of specific events (e.g., your graduation).
Data obtained from these records are nonreactive because people’s behavior is observed indirectly.

17. Archival Records Archival data are used to:
test hypotheses as part of a multimethod approach,
test the external validity of laboratory findings (i.e., whether findings generalize to real-world settings),
test hypotheses about past behavior, and
assess the effect of a natural treatment.

18. Archival Records
Natural treatments are naturally occurring events that impact society and individuals.
Examples:
drastic changes in the stock market, acts of terrorism, election of a new president (society level)
death of a parent, divorce, graduation (individual level).
Analysis of archival data can reveal effects of natural treatments on people’s behavior.

19. BOX 4.3 THE SCIENCE OF FREAKONOMICS
Do school teachers cheat on tests so that they and their students will look good?
Do police really lower crime rates?
Why does capital punishment not deter criminals?
Which is more dangerous to your child: the family owning a swimming pool or a gun?
Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?
What’s the best way to catch a terrorist?
Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfi shness?
Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it’s so ineffective?
These questions, and others, were asked by the maverick social scientist, Steven D. Levitt, in his best-selling books, Freakonomics and Super- Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2005; 2009). The answers he gives come from archival analyses of student test scores, sports records, crime statistics, birth and death statistics, and much more. We won’t give away all the answers based on this clever researcher’s mining of society’s archives, but we will say that in this era of high-stakes testing, public school teachers sometimes cheat, and if you own both a gun and a swimming pool, your child is 100 times more likely to die by drowning than by gunplay.

20. Archival Records Problems
Possible problems in archival records
Selective deposit
Only some information is recorded
High school yearbook
Public statements by politicians
Selective survival
Some records are lost, damaged or removed
Example: When students drop a course within a certain time period, the record of their ever being in the class is removed from the transcript.
Serious when it is selective
Fire in the vice presidents office
Spurious relationships
Coincidental occurrence of event
New laws and reduced crime rates
Seek converging evidence using multimethod approach.

21. The Multimethod Approach
Unobtrusive measures contribute to a multimethod approach to understanding behavior and mental processes.
A multimethod approach means that researchers use a variety of measures to examine a research question:
Direct observation
Surveys
Unobtrusive measures

22. The Multimethod Approach
Research findings based on a single method for making observations may be biased because of characteristics of the measurement process.
Because direct observation and survey methods can be reactive (i.e., people react to being observed), unobtrusive measures provide an important alternative for gaining information about people.

23. Recording Behavior Goals of observational research determine
Type of Record
Comprehensive
Select specific behaviors
Type of analysis based on
Qualitative Data
Quantitative Data
How you choose to record behavior determines how the results are measured, summarized, analyzed, and reported

24. Comprehensive Records
Narrative records
Sometimes erroneously called Qualitative Records
Usually produces Qualitative data which is just a description
Narrative records could be code to produce quantitative data
Researchers use narrative records when they want a complete “comprehensive” reproduction of people’s behavior.
Field Notes:
Written descriptions of behavior
Less comprehensive then recordings
Focus on behavior and settings related to the hypothesis
Audio Recordings
Video recordings

25. Comprehensive Records
Narrative records
Study, Classify and Organize Records
Field notes are organized
Playback recordings to make transcriptions
Classify behavior based on the records
Aggressive vs non aggressive play at school
Test hypothesis about behavior
Peer group membership influences individual-level bullying and fighting
Do not get the cart before the horse
Collect narrative records and then look for an interesting hypothesis

26. Recording Behavior Narrative records
Narrative records should be made during or soon after behavior is observed.
Observers must be carefully trained
Avoid making inferences in the description or transcript
Classify and code in an objective manner
Advantage: Can review the record often to observe behavior.
Disadvantage:
Costly, time-consuming.
Perspective can bias the record
Viewpoint of researcher
Can only pay attention to and record a limited set of information
Even electronic recordings are limited in perspective

27. Eibl-Eibesfeldt filming in the field in Papua New Guinea.

28. He attached an optical prism to the camera’s lens so that he could photograph people who were at right angles to the direction in which he pointed it

29. Recording Behavior Selected Records of Behaviors
Researchers choose the behavior or events they want to observe and ignore others.
Researchers need to decide how they will measure the behavior.
Examples: frequency of behavior, duration
Related to operational definition of dependent variable
Usually produces Quantitative data
Recording techniques include
Checklists
rating scales
electronic recording devices
For example inattentional blindness study
Record behavior of individuals when clown is riding the bike

30. Recording Behavior
Selected Records of Behaviors for study on the reactions to individuals with a physical disability
How: What behavior(s) will be measured
Based on operational definition
Physically disabled
Reaction
Type of measurement
Where: location or setting
When: time of day more specifically scheduled or random

31. Recording Behavior Selected Records of Behaviors for Pace of Life
How: What behavior(s) will be measured
Operational definition?
Type of measurement?
Where: location or setting ?
When: time of day more specifically scheduled or random?

32. Measurement Scales Determine how data will be analyzed Nominal:
Categorize behaviors, events
checklist -- see Observational Tools for examples
Ordinal: Rank-order
Interval: Specify distance on a dimension
Rating scales are treated as interval scales
Ratio: Specify distance plus meaningful zero
Give an example of each for Pace of Life study
Nominal
Ordinal
Interval
Ratio 32

33. Measurement Scales Interval: Specify distance on a dimension
Rating scales are treated as interval scales
Rating scales may not have equal intervals
The Number of Points
consider using anywhere from 5- to 11-point scales
Order Effects in Rating Scales
bias towards the left side of the scale
Category Labels:
Terrible awful good great
Training observers
Practice ratings to get equal intervals 33