Which section of a research paper interprets what the data mean in the context of the study and ...

C

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Video records are one of the most useful methods to record symbolic gestures and ceremonial rituals that occur between people in a scenario. It can reveal how previously hidden scenarios actually operate, such as inside state legislature committee meetings. They can capture and allow researchers to code facial grimaces such as clucks, furrowed brows, smiles, head tilts, hand motions, and more. Additionally police records are tape recorded, and kept for a long period of time. Classroom activities are often videotaped to provide mini-ethnography of life in a classroom. The plethora of topics captured in video can be a valuable secondary data source. Additionally, videotapes can be used for the audiovisual transcript of official proceedings to create behavioral records. The commonality of digital video cameras in phones expands even greater potential future uses of recording devices. Even video related records such a receipts from sales and rentals of DVDs can be a window into a person's behavior and social values.

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1. Comprehensive Autobiography: This is the most familiar type in which the account spans the entire life of the individual from earliest recall to the writing of the work. It includes descriptions of life experiences, and the point of interest is typically the author.
2. Topical Autobiography: This is a fragmented picture of the author's life that is typically used because the topic covered (not the author's life specifically) is of interest. This is a reflective method that allows the writer to consider one's own experience, and is useful to give prominence to the subjective understandings and systems of meaning of the research subjects.
3. Edited Autobiography: This is a type of account in which the researcher serves as editor and commentator, eliminating any repetition in descriptions by shortening long discourses and highlighting selected segments while deleting others. The researcher needs to be sure to follow the intentions of the author when cutting sections, and should keep jargon to preserve the author's true language choices.

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Researchers should be sure to use multiple methodologies when obtaining unobtrusive data in order to corroborate results. They should always use triangulation of methods. This is because often with unobtrusive data, especially with trace data, there can be another explanation that is not captured in the data source for the found pattern. An example is the study of physical wear on a set of French language tapes. A researcher might hypothesize that the tape that shows the most wear, or breakage is the most popular tape. However, the amount of wear could be attributed to many other reasons including: carelessness of the user, a technological malfunction in which the player ate the tape, and so forth. When the researcher is using data that was not created specifically for the research idea in question, he/she must always be cautious not to assume the evidence is supporting the hypothesis without confirming it in some other method.

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Physical erosion is a trace measure that examines how much something is worn down over time through human use. An example of an erosion measure is Webb's study of the rate of tile replacement around various museum exhibits. One exhibit of live chicks hatching from their shells needed to have the tiles replaced at a much more frequent rate than other areas of the museum. This would lead the researcher to believe that this is a more popular exhibit. This, when paired with other unobtrusive measures can help determine the cause of the tile erosion, whether it is sheer numbers of people crossing the area, or due to a long lingering time at the exhibit by a smaller number of people.