Units of Analysis and Units of Observations

Another point to consider when designing a research project has to do with units of analysis and units of observation. These two items concern what you, the researcher, actually observe in the course of your data collection and what you hope to be able to say about those observations. A unit of analysis is the entity that you wish to be able to say something about at the end of your study, probably what you’d consider to be the main focus of your study. A unit of observation is the item (or items) that you actually observe, measure, or collect in the course of trying to learn something about your unit of analysis. In a given study, the unit of observation might be the same as the unit of analysis, but that is not always the case. Further, units of analysis are not required to be the same as units of observation. What is required, however, is for researchers to be clear about how they define their units of analysis and observation, both to themselves and to their audiences.

More specifically, your unit of analysis will be determined by your research question. Your unit of observation, on the other hand, is determined largely by the method of data collection that you use to answer that research question. We’ll take a closer look at methods of data collection in later chapters. For now, let’s go back to the example we’ve been discussing over the course of this chapter, students’ electronic device dependence. We’ll consider first how different kinds of research questions about this topic will yield different units of analysis. Then we’ll think about how those questions might be answered and with what kinds of data. This leads us to a variety of units of observation.

If we were to ask, “Which students are most likely to exhibit dependence on their digital device?” our unit of observation would be the individual. We might mail a survey to students on campus, and our aim might be to determine whether membership in certain programs of study might be related to device dependence. We might find that majors in Communication Studies, Computational Arts, and Software Engineering are all more likely than other students to become dependent on their digital devices. As you will note, the unit of analysis is “program of study.” Although each program is made up of students, for the purposes of analysis, we are interested in the group, not the individuals.

Indeed, a common unit of analysis in social scientific inquiry is groups. Groups of course vary in size, and almost no group is too small or too large to be of interest. Families, friendship groups, and street gangs make up some of the more common micro-level groups examined by social scientists. Employees in an organization, professionals in a particular domain (e.g., chefs, lawyers, social scientists), and members of clubs (e.g., Girl Scouts, Rotary, Red Hat Society) are all meso-level groups that may function as units of analyses. Finally, at the macro level, it is possible to examine citizens of entire nations or residents of different continents or other regions.

At the group level, a study of student dependence on their smart devices might consider whether certain types of social clubs have more or fewer gadget-addicted members than other sorts of clubs. Perhaps we would find that clubs that emphasize physical fitness, such as the rugby club and the scuba club, have fewer gadget-addicted members than clubs that emphasize cerebral activity, such as the chess club and the sociology club. Our unit of analysis in this example is groups. If we had instead asked whether people who join cerebral clubs are more likely to be gadget-addicted than those who join social clubs, then our unit of analysis would have been individuals. In either case, however, our unit of observation would be individuals.

Organizations are yet another potential unit of analysis that social scientists might wish to say something about. Organizations include entities like corporations, universitys and universities, and even night clubs. At the organization level, a study of students’ device dependence might ask, “How do different universitys address the problem of device dependence?” In this case, our interest lies not in the experience of individual students but instead in the campus- to-campus differences in confronting device dependence. A researcher conducting a study of this type might examine schools’ written policies and procedures, so his unit of observation might be documents, key administrative personnel, or service providers. However, because he ultimately wishes to describe differences across universities, the university would be his unit of analysis.

Of course, it would be silly in a textbook focused on social scientific research to neglect social phenomena as a potential unit of analysis. I mentioned one such example earlier, but let’s look more closely at this sort of unit of analysis. Many social scientists study a variety of social interactions and social problems that fall under this category. Examples include social problems like murder or rape; interactions such as counseling sessions, Facebook chatting, or wrestling; and other social phenomena such as voting and even gadget use or misuse. A researcher interested in students’ electronic device dependence could ask, “What are the various types of device dependence that exist among students?” Perhaps the researcher will discover that some dependencies are primarily centered around social media or texting while other dependencies center more on various iterations of gaming. The resultant typology of device dependencies would tell us something about the social phenomenon (unit of analysis) being studied. As in several of the preceding examples, however, the unit of observation would likely be individual people.

Finally, a number of social scientists examine policies and principles, the last type of unit of analysis we’ll consider here. Studies that analyze policies and principles typically rely on documents as the unit of observation. Perhaps a researcher has been hired by a university to help it write an effective policy to guard against device dependence. In this case, the researcher might gather all previously written policies from campuses all over the country and compare policies at campuses where device dependence rates are low to policies at campuses where device dependence rates are high. In sum, there are many potential units of analysis that a social scientist might examine, but some of the most common units include the following:

• Individuals
• Groups
• Organizations
• Social phenomena
• Policies and principles