Research Objectives and Subject Integration
Strategic Definition of Research Objectives
Variables with little reflection lead to the need to consider strategies for the different ideas you have. Since it is very likely that these variables are significant in more than one of the objectives and sub-objectives of the project, minimum space should be reserved separately for explanation. The strategic place occupied by the definition of research objectives in the design requires special care in its formulation. It’s what the researcher agrees to. If clear communication is important for the entire project structure, this is especially true here.
It is important to first separate primary and secondary objectives, as set out in paragraphs concerning joint integration.
Subject Integration in Research
The backbone is observed subjects, obtained from the very integration of these subjects observed in the observation process. The relationship between one research technique and another is made from at least the double involvement of individuals observed in the research process. In one of its phases or approaches, using one of the research techniques, they take the role of the observed. In other phases, embedded in approaches to social phenomena studied with other research techniques, they occupy a different place, very close to working directly with the research team.
The main feature of this design is to actively engage subjects in research, requesting their cooperation from a level close to the investigator. These are subjects who had participated in earlier parts of the research.
The Role of Key Informants
Articulation in the integration has its roots in community studies that required intense proximity between the researcher and the observed subjects, and extensive living with them. A very special figure emerged from this: the so-called key informant. So special that in the folklore of participant observation, key informants are almost heroic figures. These are people with a certain ascendancy over the studied group, who help the researcher understand the group’s characteristics, introduce them to other members of the community, and advise the investigator on how to approach the field based on the themes and people to deal with. They become the observer of the observed.
These key informants not only represent the group studied in the eyes of the researcher but also represent the researcher in a relationship with the observed group. While an official observer is called a participant observer, these special partners are called participant observers.
Example: Youth Study in Arganda
As an example, consider the study of a young sector of the population in Arganda. The specificity of the proposal is this key role in taking interviews, which are attributed the following functions:
- Observation of the highlights of the group meetings and assessment of group dynamics, from the perspective of the players involved.
- Assessment of the relationship as expressed by the group and the degree of external validity of the statements from the particular perspective of the actors participating in the meeting.
- In connection with the foregoing, serving as a source for the analysis of the mediation itself of the group situation with regard to the discourses produced, putting at stake the reactivity, resistance to the observation, and reflexivity of empirical rationalizations.
- Assessment of the questionnaire from the point of view of actors, both in its structure and its specific questions, which led us to reconsider some of the questions.
- Assessment of the relationship between what is said in the discussion group in which they participate and possible questions in the questionnaire, from the standpoint of the actors.
In short, it asks subjects to reveal the mediation of the situational dimension from another research situation differently. The observed subjects are conceived as active, not only capable of resisting the investigation but also of discovering their strengths and becoming subject observers. Such employees become a kind of explicit ethno-sociologist themselves as members of a social group.
The problems that occur in this type of design are derived from the continuous process that integrates the subjects, while being both observed subjects and observing subjects. It may never be entirely clear just how much the subjects are still hiding from a dominant observer.