Chapter 8

Unobtrusive measures, are generally used in research, sometimes you might not want to get the information from participants directly, or conduct interviews to receive data. Through unobtrusive research methods, there are a multitude of strategies used to obtain critical information. The first type of unobtrusive measures is that of archival, which are either private or public records. Although public records are easily obtained, the records themselves are limited to type of information that can be obtained. Most of the public records are for law enforcement, credit histories, school records, usually done in an alphabetically order, chronologically, or numerically indexed. Most important reasons for the use of public records are because they are generally inexpensive and can retrieve large amount of data.

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Commercial media accounts are events that are recorded, and archived, such as in newspapers, books, magazines, television programs, ect. in commercially produced sources. Photographs can also be used to capture a multitude of information, such as cultural and social rituals, can be a great source for information. Actuarial records, are usually for special and or limited audiences, because deal with birth, death, marriage and or divorce records. These records are a bit harder to come across by. These records are more private, because we deal with application information, banking information, title, land, deeds and residential information. This information is rich of primary data, it still can be flawed, there could be missing elements in some of instances. Some information can be obtain through purchase which can be cleaned of any missing information. Formal actuarial records are those records such as birth, death and marriage certificate or records are used frequently in social science although not easily obtain but not impossible. We can also use official documentary records, which are usually are done by school, social agencies, hospitals, and retail establishments. These resounds are usually written documentation such as email, invoices and other type of written documents. These documents which are usually produced for a specific limited audience. We also can have video documentaries done with devices such as videotapes, the expansions of video recording have been more widely used since the adaptation of cameras on phones. Having a device that are hand held and portable has made it easier to obtain video recordings of different experiences and made it more accessible to a multitude of people, especially for those who are social scientist. In example a person wanting to document or research police brutality against people of color, there would be an abundance of material from which we can grab since it become more apparent to the population due to the invention of the camera on the cell phone.

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Private records, are usually things like autobiographies, diaries letters, home videos, and artifacts which can be either solicited or unsolicited. Unsolicited records finding such as house logs of a delinquent group home, because these are records we would not ask for. Solicited records, would be a journal written by nurses in an intensive care requested by the researcher. The main difference is the ability to ask for the documentation.Comprehensive autobiography is an individuals earliest recollection before writing the work. Usually an individuals experiences and personal insight. Topical autobiography researcher serves as editor and commentators, eliminating any repetition in descriptions making the subject short and crisp. Physical erosions are indicators of waring down or away, social scientist use as evidence for their research methods. Accretion measures, represents deposits over time such as tagging, people continue the to use that as creation of art and a continuous addition of it will continue to change.