Traces of Human
Social Behavior
Historically, the social sciences have
pursued a variety of approaches to
understand human social behavior.
As early as the 1960s, a distinction
between unobtrusive and obtrusive
research methods has been
made.9 Unobtrusive (sometimes also
called non-reactive) research methods
in the social sciences refer to methods
where the researcher doesn’t intrude
into the research context. For
example, unobtrusive research methods
help sociologists learn something
about human beings and the social
systems they inhabit without interrupting
them by asking questions
(questionnaires) or directly observing
their behavior (ethnography).
Traditionally, unobtrusive research
methods relied on physical objects
that are capable of representing traces
of human activity: the wear of floor
tiles around museum exhibits as indicators
of popular exhibits; the setting
of car radio dials as indicators
of favorite stations; the wear on library
books and rub and fold marks
in their pages.9 These physical traces
can be associated with accretion measures
(the build-up of physical traces)
and erosion measure (the wearing
away of materials). In general, this
data has sometimes been referred to
as found data,10 process data, or organic
data,11 emphasizing that scientists
have little control over the data
generation process.