Participant Observation

Participant Observation

1. What?

   • Researcher is involved in the research/observation
   • Can be overt or covert

2. Examples

   • Glasgow gang - Patrick
   • Black like me - Griffin

3. Advantages

   • Rich source of qualitative data - valid - main advantages link to this
   • Interactionists believe the best way to understand is to experiment things for ourselves--> Verstehen
   • Allows us to gain insight. By living as a member of that group we understand their world as they understand it (subculture) (Interpretivists)
   • Can test new hypotheses as they arise - flexible method
   • Can discover things other methods may miss by doing interviews etc
   • Can see development over time, unlike a snapshot
   • Sometimes it is the only viable method e.g. studying deviant behaviour
   • Feminists and PM prefer because it gains insight into an individual or group of people. Depth

4. Limitations

   • Time consuming - can take years
   • Need sociological training/understanding to be able to complete the research effectively and recognise significant aspects of the situation -->Expensive
   • Personally stressful and demanding - sometimes dangerous
   • Ethical problems - deception/informed consent/ taking part in deviant activity (guilty knowledge)
   • Group studied tend to be small = unrepresentative = can't make generalisations to the wider population.
   • Positivists reject as they think that the observations are biased towards the observers own subjective views. Not objective or scientific. Also say that they cannot be replicated as they are an unreliable, unsystematic method that cannot be repeated as each observation is unstandardised
   • Marxists and Functionalists believe that focusing on micro, individual "actors" meanings, ignores the wider macro forces that shape behaviour such as class inequality and shared norms/values
   • Observer bias
   • Going native
   • Qualitative data - hard to analyse (content analysis is possible)
   • Difficult to remember events - retrospective