Participant observation

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  • Created by: lmao13
  • Created on: 20-04-23 20:29

ads and dis of PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

Advantages

  • Insight- VERSTEHEN- allows empathy to be gained as gain insight into participants viewpoint of a particular situation. Can understand why people do things -gain unique authentic data..
  • Highly valid- by observing people researcher gets rich, qualitative  data that provides a picture of what people really do in their life.
  • Flexibility- Researcher can be open minded. No fixe hypothesis. New explanation can be formulated as new situations are encountered, and sociologist can change direction to follow up on new situations.
  • PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES- develop RAPPORT. They're good when researching groups such as gang members, and drug users.

Disadvantages

  • Time consuming
  • researcher must be trained tob be bale to recognise aspects of a situation that are sociologically significant.
  • personally stressful and demanding* espec if covert.
  • personal traits may stop reseacrh- eg right wing groups may be reluctant to be observed by particular researcher.
  • ethics- may need to use deception, as well as possible participation in illegal activities.
  • going native
  • sample often not random so not representative
  • not reliable as comparing with studies difficut sue to qualitative data
  • Hawthorne effect

Evaluation

Interactionalists favour small scale, face to face research methods. Look at the meanings of people interactions so prefer observations.Positivists dislike partic. obs. due to lack of scientific method. Believe that part. obs. are biased and only tell what the researcher sees. 

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