ABSTRACT
An analysis of sports-related journals published in the last decade reveals that two main methods – the questionnaire survey and interview – dominate the research literature. As Kellehear (1993, p.1) suggests, this may be due to the fact that these are the obvious methods by which to elicit information from others. As he says: ‘There is today, in social science circles, a simple and persistent belief that knowledge about people is available simply by asking. We ask people about themselves, and they tell us.’ There is, however, an ever increasing acceptance of other methods, especially those that we can refer to as unobtrusive methods (sometimes referred to as non-reactive measures). Unobtrusive methods are methods which do not have any effect upon the social environment under investigation, and require no interaction between subject and researcher that
Introduce two forms of unobtrusive method – observation and content analysis.
