Mastering Participant Observation: A Qualitative Research Art
Chapter 2: Participant Observation
Introduction
There’s nothing quite like participant observation to develop a practical application of qualitative methodology as an art and a compendium of social skills, sensory awareness, and strategic thinking.
Participant Observation in Joint Research Internships
The term “observation” is defined as closely examining the actions of something that surrounds us. Open your eyes to look, explore, admire, and compare. Monitoring to know is the backbone of scientific knowledge and the axis that articulates the qualitative research methodology.
“Science starts with observation. It is the oldest and yet the most novel of the practices used in qualitative research.”
Not all types of observation produce scientific knowledge. Comprehension is the dialectical result of observation and interpretation of the observed. Prior knowledge on the subject by the observer or the observed object affects the process of understanding. Perhaps a psychiatrist is unable to interpret the behavioral changes of his own young son, changes easily interpretable in the eyes of his partner. The latter has earned the label of science while the former has only added the tagline of ‘common’. Your partner spends more time with the small one, common knowledge based on experience gained through observing the child’s socialization process.
- The scientific observation should be directed towards the completion of a research objective included in a preliminary design showing the phases of implementation as well as the locations and subject to observe. In short, it must be systematic and purposive.
- Particularly in the field of Human Sciences, the observation must be carried out in the middle ‘social nature’ where the action takes place under investigation.
- We must also consider other factors such as the possibility of disclosing or not observing those who are objects of the same, active participation or non-participation of the observer in the observed field, the more or less flexible systematic procedure of preservation, and the reflective attitude of the researcher/observer.
- As for the participation of the observer, reminiscent of the simplistic classification, from the quantitative approach, is made of the types of observation: participant or non-participant, raising the possibility of maximum distance with instruments such as the questionnaire and not shared from the qualitative approach. Participant observation is always even.
Definition and Genesis of Participant Observation
It is understood as an open, systematic registration, and interpretive understanding of the actions of individuals or groups in their daily lives, serving to fulfill its objective, in a wide range of qualitative social research (interviews, direct observation, self-observation, participation, etc.) by which one can gather information from non-intrusive means, defining it as a research strategy.
- Denzin sees it as a “strategy that simultaneously combines field analysis of documents, interview subjects and informants, direct participation and observation, and introspection.”
- Corbetta defines it as “a strategy in which the researcher enters directly during a relatively long period in a particular social group, taken in its natural environment, establishing a relationship of personal interaction with its members and to describe their actions and understand, through a process of identification, their motivations.”
At the opposite extreme, positions are located who believe that participant observation is the most palpable shows the character of practices, rather than techniques, methods of qualitative research.
Interest in observing that our culture has marked the botanical observations of Aristotle and Herodotus on the wars between Greeks and Persians or the writings of Marco Polo’s travels to give way to the interest manifested in the observations in America by the Spanish colonizers.