Question

A social researcher is interested in studying how people experience happiness. She uses the data from the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey to measure their degree of happiness. Is this considered experiment, survey, content analysis, participant observation, secondary analysis, or meta analysis?

Answer 1

This study cannot be called an experiment because it does not involve any manipulation of an independent variable and observation of the effects on the dependent variable.

This is not a first hand survey either. It relies on secondary information.

Participant observation involves direct observation of the participants of a study and/or direct engagement in the various activities undertaken by them. Here, there are no such participants available to the person conducting the study. Hence, this is not a participant observation study.

Meta analysis involves the integration of the results of multiple studies. Since the given study does not draw from the results of multiple studies, it cannot be called a meta-analysis study.

This study cannot be called a content analysis study either. This is because it does not interpret written or recorded material to draw qualitative or quantitative inferences.

This study is best described as secondary analysis. It re-analyses the data collected for a different research question by the National Opinion Research Centre's General Social Survey.