Observation Methods – Definition, Types, Examples, Advantages

The observation method is described as a method to observe and describe the behavior of a subject. As the name suggests, it is a way of collecting relevant information and data by observing. It is also referred to as a participatory study because the researcher has to establish a link with the respondent and

Introduction to observation

Observation has one overpowering claim to validity: it deals not with what people say they do but what they actually do – to the extent that their behaviour is open to observation, and insofar as observation is as objective as it seems to be. Two questions follow from this. In the first place why

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Observation and self-report: similarities and Differences

Both self-report (as in questionnaires and interviews) and observation techniques can differ in their degree of struc­ture. The first of these may involve short, prescriptive question-and-answer formats that are easily analysed in quantitative terms. Using structured observation schedules which involve the recording and counting of pre-determined categories of behaviour is an almost exact analogy.

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The uses of observation as research method

The most general use of observation in research is exploratory, as it is in real life. When we take up a new job, enter university, move to a different part of the country (or to a different country), or even just go on holiday to a new region, we look around us. In that

Observation in multi-method research

In the same way that surveys can give the bigger picture within which more in-depth interviews are nested, so can observation provide a wider descriptive framework. In a school, for example, it would make only limited sense to interview teachers about their views on the official dis­ciplinary policy without some account, by direct observation,

Structured observation in practice

For the moment the terms structured, detached and non­participant are used almost interchangeably: that is not quite correct (see page 19) but sufficiently so to equate their meaning. All introductory classifications simplify reality. Structured observation (specifying exact behaviours and recording their frequency over short, usually intermittent, periods of time) is something that figures regularly

Event sampling in Structured observation

1. Event sampling Event sampling is used when the behaviour of interest is discontinuous and low frequency, where you would miss the events if you didn’t observe continuously. The behaviour has to be specified exactly (making a monetary donation, engaging in conversation) so that it can be recorded on an observation schedule in a

Time sampling in Structured Observation

This is also known as interval sampling because you observe for a specified duration at specified intervals – like taking a succession of snapshots, an analogy which is pretty close. Sampling means estimating the frequency of events in a continuous time sequence from a much shorter period (or periods) of time. The main practical

Validating observation sampling

In survey research a sample of the population (however defined) is taken because it is much more economical to do so. A ‘valid’ – i.e. representative – sample is achieved in various ways (not our concern here but see the book in the present series dealing with social surveys (Gillham, 2008)). Validating interval sampling

Semi-structured Observation Method

If observation is a primary technique of real-world social research one can be forgiven for thinking that structured observation, with its ‘count’ emphasis and fragmented character, is not the best way of doing it. Sometimes that level of specificity is necessary and useful and it is to be hoped that we have done justice

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Semi-structured Observation in training, teaching and learning

1. Observation in training In a sense we are all ‘disabled’ when it comes to operating an unfamiliar and relatively complicated piece of equipment: the controls in a new car, the sequence of operations in a new piece of software or a washing machine with a more elaborate choice of programmes – all of

Observation as an Experimental Method

We commonly talk of ‘experimenting’ with things – whether it is a new multi-function mobile phone or an elaborate recipe culled from a magazine – by which we mean trying something out and seeing what happens, what results we get. Formal experiments lie at the heart of scientific research and there are two main

Unstructured Observation: The Rise of Ethnography Method

Observation can vary in its degree of structure – how far the researchers’ approach is pre-formed, in the sense of know­ing what they want to find out or how they plan to do it. But no research, however open-ended, lacks structure. It would be chaotic if it were. So the chapter heading is not

Process of observation methodology

This chapter is written ‘as it happened’ so that much of it has an episodic quality. The chronological form of presentation also demonstrates the nature of the research process, including the development of the author’s thinking. When I first came to work in Glasgow in the mid-1980s one of the things that struck me

Visual Ethnography Method

It seems obvious: if you want to describe a culture, making your account vivid and ‘real’, what more direct method could there be than the use of visual media? And surely, if photographs and video are used you are dealing with a direct representation of reality rather than one conjured up by words? The

Text and images in Visual Ethnography

1. Text and images This discursive introduction in what is intended to be a practical book is because of the need to draw back from the apparent obviousness of visual ‘reality’ expressed in the opening paragraphs. That caution is not intended to devalue visual repre­sentation: on the contrary, why not use images to ‘describe’?

Photographic sequences as a structured narrative

Chapter 2 described how I first observed and recorded interaction between members of the public and Ian in Glasgow’s Argyle Street. As I did so I could see that his experience as a street beggar could be told as a sequence of wordless photographic images which could be ‘read’ as a textual narrative could

The use of video

Video might seem to get round the issue of the process of selection which is self-evident in still photographs. Certainly continuous filming of a sequence of events does demon­strate the chronological relationship as well as providing more options for the abstraction of specific elements. But what is put in front of the camera is

Ethnographic collaboration with members of the ‘culture’ being studied

Human research, even of the culturally sensitive variety, can be seen as something done to people, the passive recipients of the researcher’s attention. But perhaps this is to overstate the case. The appeal of ethnographic research is a lot to do with the personal relationships – sometimes enduring long past the period of formal

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Self-Observation method

Self-observation is best known as a way of enhancing per­formance, via video recording, widely used in interview training. Actors whose performances are filmed have long had the advantage over the rest of us of knowing how they look and behave. That kind of feedback can have a salutary effect, not always conscious. But here