experimental methods. The sociological variant focuses on the behaviour of members of socially defined populations and favours the multi-variate analysis of representative survey data collected in natural conditions. Individuals are classified according to relevant variables of social position, disposition and behaviour, and the variables can be statistically manipulated. In the study of organizations, participant observation is commonly adopted. Content analysis is often practised as a form of behavioural research, treating media documents (texts) as the equivalent of populations which can also be sampled and submitted to statistical variable analysis.