Participant Observations - done Flashcards
problems faced with participant observation
- getting in, staying in, and getting out
- whether to use overt or covert research
getting in
making contact - joining a group may require personal skills, Polsky used pool skills to join poolroom hustlers
acceptance - win the trust of the observed and their acceptance
the observer’s role - is to gain vantage points of observations, and not to disrupt normal patterns
getting out
easier than getting and staying in, however they may struggle to readjust to society
covert observation
observed unaware of research - doesn’t risk Hawthorne effect, however risk of cover being blown, requires act to be kept up ad extensive reserach prior, they rely on memory as cannot take notes
ethical issues - immoral to decieve people, may have to lie to why they are leaving group, may have to participate in immoral or illegal acts
overt observation
ask permission and reveal the identity
- avoids ethical problems, allows questions an outsider wouldn’t ask to be asked, can openly take notes, allows the use of interview methods
- refusal to research groups, risks creating hawthorne effect - they behave differently due to knowledge of being observed.
advantages of participant observation
validity
flexibility
practical advantages
validity of participant observation - positive
PO allows a way for rich qualitative data that provides a picture of how the observer actually lives
flexibility
allows open-mindedness as there is no fixed hypothesis - as new situations are encountered new data can be collected - allows a way to find info other methods may not be able to.
practical advantages
- maybe the only way of obtaining info - gangs may feel uncomfortable answering questions
- effective solution to where the question would be ineffective
disadvantages of participant observation
practical disadvantages
ethical problems
representativeness
validity
practical disadvantages
the researcher needs to be trained, is time-consuming, stressful, requires specialized skills, and many groups may not want to be studied
ethical problems
deceives people in order to gather info on them
representativness
the group is small and the sample is often chosen haphazardly, compared to quantitative survey methods, they are unrepresentative as people cannot generalize from small groups but can from large ones.
validity - negative
gives an authentic account of the actors’ world - positivists reject this due to a view of observer bias as the researcher chooses what facts are worthy of noting down
