L-- observation

Question 1

Essential understanding of qualitative observation

Answer 1

• Focus on how people interact, interpret each other’s behaviour and act upon these interpretations in a natural setting
• Observation generates meaningful knowledge, it helps to gain an insight into the behaviour
• Observation allows the researcher to be immersed deeply into the studied phenomenon and gain first-hand experiences.

Advantage:
The ability to generate diverse data about the behaviour of participants in a naturally occurring setting
Limitation:
biases

Question 2

Naturalistic/ lab observation

Answer 2

Naturalistic
Pros:
• High ecological validity in a naturally occurring setting
• Useful to research a particular behaviour (e.g. violence)
Cons:
• Time-consuming

Lab
Pros:
Construct a situation that do not happen in real life
• Isolate the behaviour of interest more efficiently
Cons:
• Unnatural–Artificiality
• Ethical considerations

Question 3

Participant/non-participant

Answer 3

Participant
Pros:
• Allow the researcher to gain insight of the behaviour
Cons:
• If the observer becomes too involved, he will lose objectivity

Non-participant
Pros: 
•	 More impartial (fair)
Cons: 
•	Some detailed could only be observed "from within"--from the perspective of a group member

Question 4

Overt/Covert

Answer 4

Overt
Pros: 
•	Give informed consent
Cons: 
•	Participants' expectations may influence their behaviour

Covert
Pros:
- Participants do not know that they are being observed (behave naturally)
Cons:
• Less ethical–no informed consent/ privacy

Question 5

Structured/ Unstructured

Answer 5

Structured
Pros:
• Standardized procedure which allows standardized procedure which allows multiple observers in the same research study
Cons:
• Inflexible–certain aspects might be neglected

Unstructured
Pros:
• More flexible, the researchers are not limited to the research question/ theory
Cons:
• Less comparable across researchers and participants

Question 6

Inductive Content Analysis

Answer 6

• Derive a set of recurring themes
• Researcher has to maintain a balance between description and interpretation
• The researcher writes notes about initial thoughts and observations that are useful for analysis

1. Writing : verbatin (word-for-word accounts of everything) / post-modern (notes about the gesture and other non-verbal elements in the participant’s behaviour)
2. Reading the raw material several times
   • First reading–identify initial themes
   • Second reading– confirm the themes and add new themes
   • Repeat the process and check the credibility
3. Group low-level themes into a smaller number of high-level themes
4. Prepare a summary table of themes with all the high-level emergent themes
5. Form late conclusions based on the summary table
6. Credibility check– show the participants the themes and interpretations . Accompany the resulting analysis “memos” which explains to the reader how and why certain analysis decisions were made–increase the “thickness” (credibility) of descriptions

“Grounded theory” –when a theory emerges from the data