Unobtrusive Measures in PR Research

Unobtrusive research is a type of research that allows you to conduct your research with out interfering with the participates of the research. By using this type of research researchers can use more imaginative ways to conduct research. Unobtrusive research can also help you to cut down on biases that occur in research.  It is also cheaper and it allows you to observe subjects naturally. 

The biggest thing people have against unobtrusive research is whether it is ethical or not. It can be seen as unethical since you are finding out information about people without their permission. On the other hand the information that they are obtaining is open to the public, like criminal records and people's photo's online. 

There are three different types unobtrusive research they are indirect measures, Content analysis and Secondary analysis. Indirect measures is is an unobtrusive measure that occurs naturally in a research context. The researcher is able to collect the data without introducing any formal measurement procedure.  An example of indirect measurements is when they wanted to find out the popularity of exbits in a musmuem, the musmuem put down new tiles over a period of time they analyzed the wear and tear of the tiles since it shows that alot of people were standing there looking at the exhibit. 

Content analysis is  is the analysis of text documents. The analysis can be quantitative, qualitative or both. The problem with content analysis is you are limited to the types of information available in text form, you have to be especially careful with sampling in order to avoid bias. and  you have to be careful about interpreting results of automated content analyses. 

Secondary analysis, like content analysis, makes use of already existing sources of data. Examples of this is the census bureau data, crime records and standardized testing data.