Participant observation - Walking through the process

Description and rationale

 This is an extremely interactive approach to collecting qualitative information.  It depends primarily on observation of action in context.  However it combines interview, artifacts, rituals, language and symbols, and all the elements of organized human activity with observation.

Observation in context
 

The researcher examines individual and group behavior and tries to connect it to the physical, social and emotional surroundings of setting.  The researcher tries to understand how setting frames and gives significance to the activity that is observed.

Scenario:  A campus ministry has attempted to be inclusive.  Weekly religious services are organized and attempts are made by campus faculty to include students who are visually impaired in the process.  Most students are undergraduates and live in dorms that are said to be accessible to handicapped individuals.  After planning the first religious activity and making the acquaintance of undergraduate students who wish to participate in the religious service, faculty volunteers are ready to begin.  Each is paired with a visually impaired student and they meet up with their partners at 4:00 pm in respective dorms.  There is much to take stock of as they proceed to University Center and to the elevators that take them to the chapel in the gallery.  Conversation on the way, the terrain of the campus walkways, harsh weather, the strangeness of the situation, giving direction to the chapel and getting there, getting on the elevator, breaking the ice before the service begins, waiting and watching, having coffee after the service.

 
 
 

Faculty have been asked to keep field journals of the experience over the entire time of the project.  How many different dimensions of the experience need to be noted, and what needs to be interpreted?  How are the issues that follow related to this vignette?

Here are some of the issues that you have to be aware of and have to make part of your observational efforts. The discussion of insider outsider experiences becomes very important in understanding patterns of activity.
 

• How the social environment is importantly organized by status, age, gender, ethnicity, wealth, and social conditions
• How relationships and communication have distinctive patterns that are shaped by social variables
• How patterns of activities describe these relationships and emerge over time
• How the apparent meaningfulness of these patterns changes over time as researcher spends more time in context

• Progress of observation

Field Notes

 

It is important to keep ongoing field notes and to have a system for inquiring into observation as one proceeds.

 

 
 
 

Note taking
 

• Pre standardized forms can be used, but they can also lend the impression that one is not completely open to the setting and its character.
• Open ended diary formats are more likely to give the researcher the room needed to reflect and make sense of what is happening.

Neutrality
 
 

• It is important to remain neutral.
• However it is also important to participant, to take part in routine tasks and activities.  Locals are more likely to see the identity of researcher as credible and open when the researcher participates in the life of a setting.

Sampling
 

Sampling should be purposive - It can and should include people, but also activities and times of day.

Methods of sampling make use of critical case sampling, extreme case sampling, maximum variation sampling, homogeneous sampling, typical case sampling, snowball sampling and criterion sampling.

 

 
 
 

Interview with participant observation
 

Both open ended and structured interview approaches can be used.  The primary focus of the interview needs to be that of clarifying what has been observed.  Interviews lend to the impression that the social experiences of subjects are important to the researcher, who through interview is communicating that he/she want to know more. The content of interviews can and should investigate local knowledge of the physical and social environment, resources and technologies, the social organization of the setting, felt problems and needs, psychological states such as initiative or shame and embarrassment, time and time trends, life histories, expectations, coping.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Group meetings an focus group interviews can also be part of participant observation.
 
 

Participant observers can also make use of surveys and questionnaires in this context.
 
 
 

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