Introduction to Psychology 1/IPSY101/Scientific thinking/Archival

Some researchers gain access to large amounts of data without interacting with a single research participant. Instead, they use existing records to answer various research questions. This type of research approach is known as archival research. Archival research relies on looking at past records or data sets to look for interesting patterns or relationships.

For example, a researcher might access the academic records of all individuals who enrolled in college within the past ten years and calculate how long it took them to complete their degrees, as well as course loads, grades, and extracurricular involvement. Archival research could provide important information about who is most likely to complete their education, and it could help identify important risk factors for struggling students.

In an interesting example of archival research, the measurements of the models photographed for Playboy magazine’s centrefolds were studied from 1953 to 2001 (Voracek & Fisher, 2002). The researchers were able to use the published data on height, weight and measurements for the bust, waist and hips that accompanied the photographs. These data then allowed them to calculate body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and a rating on an androgyny index. The results showed that body mass index decreased from 20 to 18, and waist-to-hip ratios increased from just below 0.7 to just above 0.7. The effect of these changes means that more recent models have become more androgynous in appearance.

In yet another example, an analysis of language patterns in tweets was used to predict the incidence of heart disease for communities in the United States (Eichstaedt et al., 2015).

In comparing archival research to other research methods, there are several important distinctions. For one, the researcher employing archival research never directly interacts with research participants. Therefore, the investment of time and money to collect data is considerably less with archival research. Additionally, researchers have no control over what information was originally collected. Therefore, research questions have to be tailored so they can be answered within the structure of the existing data sets. There is also no guarantee of consistency between the records from one source to another, which might make comparing and contrasting different data sets problematic.