Participant observation

What- For over a century, an ethnographic method known as ‘participant observation’ has been an essential tool utilised in various anthropological and sociological disciplines in order to collect important qualitative research about people, their activities, and their cultures. (Kawulich, B 2005) Participant observation enables a researcher to learn about the studied culture and its associated activities in a natural setting, through the acts of observing and participating in these activities. Schensul, Schensul, and Lecompte (1999) define participant observation, the prime method used by anthropologists when doing fieldwork, as "the process of learning through exposure to or involvement in the day-to-day or routine activities of participants…

Participant-observation is one of the key research methods in anthropology. It is often used by sociocultural anthropologists and other academics in attempt to understand as best as possible different aspects of a culture. Participant-observation is a method where researchers choose to live directly in the cultural group that they are studying. By living and immersing oneself within a culture for a long period of time, participant-observation works by allowing anthropologists to get deeper into…

observe a consumer’s actual behaviour rather than the ideal behaviour prescribed by society. The consumers, as a result, were honest in their actions and decisions. The observational method was an ideal way to ease me, a novice in anthropology, into the area of field research. We were instructed to use the non-participant field research method where I was required to observe what consumers did in a natural context without interfering. I felt this was very beneficial because it allowed me to…

One has to look at Information types wherein if Frequency distribution is quite high and when enumeration and sample are small like prototype, participant observation may seem inadequate and inefficient, but Interview may be efficient and may lack adequacy. Similarly when the Incidents and History is involved, Participant Observation method be the first and best choice and may also employ mixed method when needed to go for Interviews. Based on Institutional scenarios like Factories, Governments,…

interviews, questionnaires or observation in order to answer your research question. Similarly, secondary data is used to answer your research question, except the data is already there for you. Thus you do not need to conduct any form of interview or observation. However, you do need to use this data to support as well as argue against it, in order to form…

research comprises of a somewhat small sample which are not ‘statistically represented’ that generalisation should be representational on the content of scope of experiences, opinions, factors and outcomes of the studied population. Thus, creating generalisation in qualitative research lays in the issues of validity and reliability of the level of notions, explanation and groups of the parent population (Lewis and Ritchie, 2003: 269). Among the three discussed qualitative methods (individual…

Some may argue that triangulated research runs the risk of addressing a big amount of unfocused questions at once and makes it difficult for the researcher to sequence and arrange according to their primary and secondary importance (Olsen, 2004). In addition to that, using triangulation might make the research open to the risk of subjectivity, which is the ability of interpreting data by making judgement by using experience, beliefs, and feelings. Also, if systemic bias- which are external…

According to Spradley, “participating in activities, asking questions, eating strange foods, learning a new language, watching ceremonies, taking fieldnotes, washing clothes, writing letters home, tracing out genealogies, observing play, interviewing informants, and hundreds of other things, Indeed, one of the primary methods used in ethnography is participant observation, which implies that the ethnographer not only observes activities in the field setting, but also participates in them…

Assumption 1: Ontological assumption: Concerns the nature of reality, that is, a view that qualitative study is assuming the notion of several truths, such as the use of several types of evidence in themes using the actual words of different participants and presenting different perspectives (Creswell, 2013). The ontological assumptions made for this study are: a). that SAHC leaders have differing perspectives and experiences in the way they manage challenges. b). Participants will voluntarily…

The use of the ethnography in this study means researchers usually refers to detailed and long-term observational studies, also known as “participant observation.” These involve the researcher living within a community for a lengthy period, observing members’ daily life, their beliefs, and their practices, with the aim of understanding the worldview of its members (Helman, 2001). In the study, researchers visit the three communities weekly for six-months each. They observe all events occur among…