Participant observation

The qualitative description approach is utilized to describe an individual’s lived experience in his or her own terms or understandings – it is a recognition of various shared experiences, social interactions, and a comprehensive analysis of an experience in the ordinary, layman terms of that particular event (Sandelowski, 2000; Willis, Sullivan-Bolyai, Knafl, & Cohen, 2016; Frankel & Devers, 2000). This type of qualitative methodology can be particularly insightful for analyzing individual…

people who are confidently able to exercise survival skills are better community members than those with mental disabilities. In order to test Sterk’s formative theory, she carried out unobtrusive observations, initial interviews, and two techniques for ethnographic interviews. To start, unobtrusive observations were carried out at agencies that train adults with mental…

advocate for participant-observation, in which the ethnographer immerses themselves into the culture for a long period of time, in the hopes of gaining an insider’s perspective. Participant-observation has several stages, and a few notable studies have been completed with this method. While participant-observation has both strengths and weaknesses, it is a valuable tool for ethnographers who conduct studies on foreign cultures. As defined by Luke Eric Lassiter, participant-observation is “the…

and different family traditions and customs to sacrifice their ancestors by utilizing the participant observation and the observation research methods. I recalled the memories of my personal experience during last August when I was engaging in my grandmother’s worship, which applied to both the participant observation and the observation research methods. On the one hand, for the participant observation, I would like to share what my family members did during my grandmother’s worship. It was…

A six step process is presented on how to write a participant observation study ranging from the introduction to the differences in age, gender, and socioeconomic class and how it affects your study. First, on the list is creating an introduction with information of where you performed the study and what you were trying to discover. Make sure to include any resources used. Second, tell your audience what you uncovered along with the results determined. Third, make sure the concepts used are…

In anthropology, the most important method of studying a culture is known as Participant Observation. This style of observation allows the anthropologist to fully submerge themselves in the culture they are trying to understand. In class, we were to perform our own participant observation at a meal with a group of people to see the social and gender norms associated with eating. During my participant observation I realized that culture and gender has a large impact on our food choices and…

photos have been taken from internet, books, assessment reports, and human participants who basically work as photographers. Provided to photographs that have been captured by the me during my personal…

The participants were from the Midwest region of the United States and of Euro American decent. The majority of the sample was caregivers (30 total participants), followed by parents (27 participants), directors/owners (19 participants), policy makers and social service professions were the smallest portion with only 8 participants each. While this is a large sample size for a qualitative study it is important to consider…

One of the key criteria addressed by positivist researchers is that of internal validity, in which they seek to ensure that their study measures or tests what is actually intended. According to Merriam (1998), the qualitative investigator’s equivalent concept is analogous to internal validity and deals with the question: “How congruent are the research findings with reality. However, according to the philosophy underlying qualitative research, reality is relative to meaning that people construct…

flexibility of the location and timing of the research activities. In the study of ICU patients discussed above, the location of the interview was at the patient’s bedside, conducted at a time convenient for the participant (Clukey et al., 2014). Depending on the number of participants and the length of the interview, qualitative research can be time-consuming which is one weakness for researchers to consider when developing these studies (Anderson, 2010). Another weakness found when using…