1.5 : Archival Research

Researchers do not need to interact with participants to carry out psychological research. Instead, they may find it more appropriate to answer certain research questions using material that was already collected and archived.

This method is known as archival research—the use of existing records and data sets for experimental purposes. This may include public records, databases of survey results, and even social media information.

For example, a researcher may be interested in exploring how students’ driving behavior changes when there’s a big college home game. Rather than watching students on the road—which would be dangerous—she can access police records and compare the number of speeding tickets given out on game days versus other days.

She may find that students are more likely to speed on game days because they are excited to get to the stadium. Using this method, she can be confident that the results were not affected by observational bias, because she didn’t interact with the participants herself.

In addition, because she doesn’t need to spend time and money collecting her own data, she can focus her attention on data analysis.

However, archival research also has a few drawbacks. Specifically, researchers cannot control the data collection process or what data were collected. For instance, the police records may not be able to confirm whether the speeding drivers were on their way to the game or not.

While researchers are therefore limited in the questions they can answer, the approach does allow them to carryout studies they might not otherwise be able to perform.