What is participant observation?
Researcher joins in with the group being studied and observes the behaviour
What is non participant observation?
Researcher doesn’t join in with the group behavior but rather watches from afar in order to observe the participant behavior
Do researchers solely use observations?
Most observers (or ‘ethnographer’) will combine their observations with other methods
- most with unstructured interviews and some combine them with more formal questions
What are covert observations?
Involves the researcher not informing members of the group the reason for their presence
- keeping their true intentions secret
- automatically raises ethical concerns
- can be combined with non participant or participant observations
What are overt observations?
Involves researcher being open about their intentions in the field and ensuring all members of the social group are aware of what’s happening
- can be combined with non participant or participant observations
What’s a practical advantage of observations?
Participant observations might be the only method to gaining access to certain groups
What are practical disadvantages to observations?
- Time consuming and expensive in relation to the small amount of respondents
- Takes time to gain trust and build rapport
- Requires observational and interpersonal skills that not everyone possesses
- Gaining access can be a problem
What are ethical advantages to observations in relation to respondents?
- Interpretivists and feminist researchers prefer this method because its respondent led
- Allows respondents to speak for themselves and avoids a master client relationship (common with more quantitative methods)
What are ethical disadvantages to observations in relation to covert PO?
- Mainly limited to covert participant observation
> in which respondents are deceived and cannot give informed consent to participant in the research - Legality can be an issue in covert research where researchers working with deviant groups may have to do illegal acts to maintain behavior
What are theoretical advantages to observations in relation to natural behaviour?
- Participant observation (PO) allows the researcher to see what people do rather than what people say they do
- PO takes place in natural settings
> means respondents act more naturally than in a lab or during a more formal interview
What’s another theoretical advantage of observations in relation to empathy?
- Verstehen (empathetic understanding): PO allows the researcher to fully join the group and to see things through the eyes (and actions) of the people in group
> allows the researcher to gain empathy through personal experiences
What about reliability and representativeness?
- Low degree of reliability: almost impossible to repeat as PO’s relies on skills and characteristics of the researcher
- Low degree of representativeness: uses small, non-random samples that arent generalisable to the wider population
What are more theoretical disadvantages in relation to validity and social conflict?
- Question how valid PO really is
> argue the method lacks objectivity
> can be hard for the researcher to avoid subjectivity - Lack a concept of social structures such as class, gender or ethnicity
> by focusing on the participants own interpretation of the events
What’s an example of an observation study?
Mac an’ Ghaill - Participant observation into relationships between schooling, class and masculinity.
Identified 3 different subcultures
What are critiques of mac an’ ghaill’s study?
- Criticized for being unethical as the research often casually hung out with the kids
- Small scale also highly criticized
What are 2 other examples of observations?
- Laud Humphreys: PO on men partaking in the tea room trade later covertly followed them home and asked questions
- Mac an Ghaill: Young, Gifted and Black, observation looking at relations between white teachers and two groups of male students with anti school values - Asian and African-Carribean
