Participant Observation Advantages and Disadvantages
- Created by: ItsLibbehh
- Created on: 10-04-15 14:41
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- Participant Observation
- Advantages
- Validity
- Actually observing - there's a rich source of qualitative data
- This is the main strength
- Insight
- Experience it for ourselves for the best understanding
- Gain empathy through personal experience
- Gain insight into their way of life, their viewpoints, their values and problems
- Uniquely valid, authentic data
- Gain insight into their way of life, their viewpoints, their values and problems
- Flexibility
- It allows sociologists to enter the situation with an open mind about what they will find
- Open-mindedness allows the researcher to discover things that other methods may miss
- It allows sociologists to enter the situation with an open mind about what they will find
- Practical Advantages
- May be the only method for studying certain groups, especially those engaged in activities that wider society sees as deviant
- A teenage gang is likely to see to see researchers who come armed with a questionnaire as the unwelcome representatives of authority
- A rapport can be built and can gain trust of the members
- May be the only method for studying certain groups, especially those engaged in activities that wider society sees as deviant
- Validity
- Disadvantages
- Practical Disadvantages
- Very time consuming
- The researcher needs to be trained so as to be able to recognise aspects of a situation that are sociologically significant
- It can be personally stressful and demanding, especially if covert
- Requires observational and interpersonal skills that not everyone has
- Many groups may not wish to be studied this way and some make access difficult
- Ethical Problems
- Covert participant observation raised ethical difficulties
- Deceiving people in order to obtain information about them
- Participating in illegal or immoral activities in the course of their sociological research
- Covert participant observation raised ethical difficulties
- Representativeness
- The group studied is usually very small
- This does not provide a sound basis for making generalisations
- The group studied is usually very small
- Reliability
- It is unlikely any other investigator would be able to replicate the original study
- Because participant observation usually produces qualitative data, this can make comparisons with other studies difficult
- Positivists, who see sociology as scientific, thus reject participant observation as an unsystematic method that cannot be replicated by other researchers
- Practical Disadvantages
- Advantages
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