Kate France D.
Nueva November 20, 2019
GED0112-SEC10 Scholarly Inquiry
Participant Observation
Important Details:
Participant observation connects the researcher to the most basic of human
experiences, discovering through immersion and participation the hows and whys
of human behavior in a particular context.
It is also used across the social sciences, as well as in various forms of
commercial, public policy, and nonprofit research.
Anthropology and sociology, in particular, have relied on participant observation
for many of their seminal insights, and for most anthropologists and many
sociologists, doing a participant observation study at a field site is an important
rite of passage into the discipline.
There are three key elements of a participant observation study:
1. Getting into the location of whatever aspect of the human experience
you wish to study. This means going to where the action is.
2. Building rapport with the participants. The point of participation
observation is that you wish to observe and learn about the things
people do in the normal course of their lives.
3. Spending enough time interacting to get the needed data. The
informal, embedded nature of participant observation means that you
cannot always just delve straight into all the topics that address your
research issues and then leave.
Participant observation excels in capturing these elements, particularly:
1. Rules and norms that are taken for granted by experienced participants
or cultural insiders
2. Routine actions and social calculations that happen below the level of
conscious thought
3. Actions and thoughts that are not generally recognized as part of the
“story”, such as personal rituals and routines, are sometimes missed or
hard to uncover in conventional interviews because people may not
think to mention them or may consider it silly to bring them up
The important distinction between direct observation and participant observation
is critical to users of both users of both observation methods.
Direct observation is primarily a quantitative technique in which the observer is
explicitly counting the frequency and/or intensity of specific behaviors or events
or mapping the social compositions and action of a particular scene.
Participant observation is inherently a qualitative and interactive experience and
relatively unstructured. It is generally associated with exploratory and explanatory
research objectives- why questions, causal explanations, uncovering the cognitive
elements, rules and norms that underlie the observable behaviors.
Bernard (2006) identifies five reasons for conducting participant observation
research
1. Opening up the areas of inquiry to collect a wider range of data
2. Reducing the problem of reactivity
3. Enabling researchers to know what questions to ask
4. Gaining intuitive understanding of the meaning of your data
5. Addressing problems that are simply unavailable to other data
collection techniques
Benefits in using participant observation technique
1. To establish the topics of inquiry for later, more structured data
collection
2. To avoid suspect self-reported data
3. To identify behaviors that might go unreported or be missed due to the
limitations of procedural memory
4. To lessen reporting biases
5. To integrate the observed behavior into its physical context
6. To see the behavior you are interested in as it happens
The role of participant observation in the research process
The potential drawbacks of participant observation include these elements:
1. Potentially and unpredictably time consuming
2. Highly “practitioner-sensitive:
3. Sometimes difficult to generalize from
4. Your audience may not respect it
How to conduct participation observation:
1. Choosing the research venue(s)
2. Preparing to enter the field
Self-Presentation
Data Collection Objectives
3. Entering the observation venue
4. What to observe
5. Collecting qualitative data
A general list of topics to be discussed or the types of things
to be observed
A fill-in blank template
A reporting summary template
A process model template
A map
6. Organizing data
Field Note and Documentation Tips
o Capture it quickly
o Expand your notes as soon as possible
o Use recording devices and assistants
o Use time and labor saving tricks
o Stay organized
7. How long to stay
8. Exiting the Venue
Before you leave
o Revisit your informed consent protocols
o Make sure your data are complete, organized, and
backed up
o Thank those who have helped you
o Create a contact file
