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110 PART II: Descriptive MethodsKey ConceptArchival Records• Archival records are the public and private documents describing theactivities of individuals, groups, institutions, and governments, andcomprise running records and records of specific, episodic events.• Archival data are used to test hypotheses as part of the multimethodapproach, to establish the external validity of laboratory findings, and toassess the effects of natural treatments.• Potential problems associated with archival records include selectivedeposit, selective survival, and the possibility of spurious relationships.Consider for a moment all of the data about you that exist in various records:birth certificate; school enrollment and grades; credit/debit card purchases;driver’s license, employment and tax records; medical records; voting history;e-mail, texting, and cell phone accounts; and if you’re active on sites such asFacebook and Twitter, countless entries describing your daily life. Now multiplythis by the millions of other people for whom similar records exist and youwill only touch upon the amount of data “out there.” Add to this all of the dataavailable for countries, governments, institutions, businesses, media, and youwill begin to appreciate the wealth of data available to psychologists to describepeople’s behavior using archival records.Archival records are the public and private documents describing the activitiesof individuals, groups, institutions, and governments. Records that arecontinuously kept and updated are referred to as running records. The recordsof your academic life (e.g., grades, activities) are an example of running records,as are the continuous records of sports teams and the stock market. Other records,such as personal documents (e.g., birth certificates, marriage licenses),are more likely to describe specific events or episodes, and are referred to asepisodic records (Webb et al., 1981).As measures of behavior, archival data share some of the same advantagesas physical traces. They are unobtrusive measures that are used to complementhypothesis testing based on other methods, such as direct observation, laboratoryexperiments, and surveys. When findings from these various approachesconverge (or agree), the external validity of the findings increases. That is, wecan say the findings generalize across the different research methods and enhancesupport for the hypothesis being tested. For example, recall the physicaltrace measures relating to portion size used to test the hypothesis concerningthe “French paradox,” namely, that the French eat less than Americans (Rozinet al., 2003). These researchers also examined archival records to test theirhypothesis. They examined restaurant guides in two cities, Philadelphia andParis, and recorded the number of references to “all-you-can-eat” buffets. Usingan existing archival record (restaurant guides), they found converging evidencefor their hypothesis: Philadelphia had 18 all-you-can-eat options and Parishad none.Researchers may examine archives to assess the effect of a natural treatment.Natural treatments are naturally occurring events that significantly impact societyor individuals. Because it is not always possible to anticipate these events,researchers who want to assess their impact must use a variety of behavioral