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 don’t we just take what we are told, because surely people know themselves better than anyone else does? And secondly, if observation is more valid why is it not used more often in social research?

For some dimensions of human experience asking people is the only feasible way of finding out, particularly the ‘invisible’ elements: thoughts, feelings, intentions, attitudes and the like. Sometimes these can be inferred from beha­viour but in the main we can only speculate. The question of validity (how accurate these self-reports are) is not a simple one because people ‘construct’ their understanding of themselves; and how is anyone to say whether these self­constructions are accurate? It is not a meaningful question: such formulations represent how people manage them­selves, changing with age and experience, a process of per­manent revision in an attempt to find an effective way of being. It is an entirely subjective ‘reality’ even if sometimes appearing to verge on self-delusion: we all have a preferred way of viewing ourselves.

Words and deeds

Whether people report their behaviour accurately is a dif­ferent matter; and here the notion of accuracy has a different meaning. We can observe what people do and that includes observing ourselves. Comparing observed beha­viour with the acknowledged subjectivity of self-perception, it is easy to assign to observation an unchallenged objectivity. Less easy is to acknowledge that observation is to a greater or lesser degree a process of selection and reconstruction. Interestingly, it is research on the validity of witness state­ments (traditionally highly valued in criminal courts) that has shown how much omission, reconstruction and unvarnished error there can be in such reports.

We can accept that we may not be entirely accurate in our recollection of past events, including our own behaviour. That we may not accurately know how we behave in the pre­sent is another matter. If you have ever had to keep a work diary as part of a job evaluation exercise you will know that the pattern is often rather different from your unanalysed impression; in particular that the productive elements are fewer than you would like to think. And that is evident at the more mundane level of how we spend our money – an exercise that most of us are driven to at some point when our bank balance is inexplicably depleted or a credit card bill far beyond what was expected.

The simple fact is that we don’t normally feel the need to have an explicit record of what we do so that we can’t ‘know’ ourselves in that fashion – and, therefore, cannot be other than approximately accurate. We have an impression of how we conduct ourselves and how other people behave in a range of social situations. In the ordinary business of living that is all we need: self-invigilation is unnecessary. But research requires a more rigorous approach.

In social research on human behaviour survey methods of one kind or another (interviews, questionnaires) predominate. Some are more expensive on time and resources than others; questionnaires are often preferred for that reason. But none is as time-consuming as observation; and this is the main answer to our earlier question as to why it is less often used.

Structured observation is the most economical form with its highly specific focus and systematic checking of the ele­ments of behaviour – for example, bullying incidents in a playground; stopping to look at a picture in a gallery; fre­quency of donations to a street beggar and so on. Here the observation is of the restricted non-participant variety. At the other extreme essentially unstructured participant observation, typically in the theoretical framework of ethnography (usually describing a particular sub-culture in our own society) involves a much longer duration – weeks and usually months, exceptionally even longer than that.

Such groups are investigated in this way for a number of reasons (to be considered later) but also because their mem­bers may not be willing, or sufficiently ‘organized’, to answer questions about themselves. One of the under-recognized weaknesses of survey methods is the implicit assumption that people have their self-knowledge arranged in such a way that they can be easily interrogated about it. This is part of the contemporary expectation in Western society that people should be able to explain themselves. Compliance with such expectations is one reason why self-reports have to be treated with caution: responses to survey questions may be little more than an artefact of the method employed.

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 –

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Limitations of Observation Method

In Chapter 8 we considered the role of self-observation as a research method in its own right, particularly direct access to ‘internal’ events, though these

Ethical Dilemmas of Observation Method

How would you feel about being observed systematically, whether for research or any other purpose? There is an intuitive, hard-to-define sense of unease in that

Self-Observation: What use is such an account to anyone else?

We are (most of us) very interested in ourselves and routi­nely engage in self-scrutiny at one level or another. But we do not usually seek

Reviewing the raw material from self-observation

A self-observation research procedure generates a lot of material. Its collection needs to be organized from the start, and progressively edited down. A good habit

Self-Observation: Observing how we work

The physical, habitual and social context of how we work or research is part of the picture. We don’t just exist in terms of what

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

Ethnographic methods: specific research problems

1. Ethnographic research is used to define a research problem Certain well-established research topics attract the researcher because of their extensive bodies of associated literature,

Ethnographic methods

1. Ethnographic methods: a general statement of utility As noted in the previous chapter, ethnographic methods have been adopted by scholars from many academic disciplines

Participant observation as style and context

It is certainly possible to use data collection techniques that are typical of ethno­graphic research (see Chapter 4) in ways that do not involve participant

Introduction to ethnography: basic principles, definition and nature

Despite this diversity of positions from which ethnographers may derive, we may still highlight a few important features that link the many and varied approaches:

Sociocultural theory and ethnographic research

As the ethnographic method has spread across disciplines, it has become associ­ated with a wide variety of theoretical orientations: structure-functionalism symbolic interactionism feminism Marxism ethnomethodology

A brief history of ethnographic research

Ethnography literally means a description of a people. It is important to under­stand that ethnography deals with people in the collective sense, not with indi­viduals.

A definition of observation

We have seen that ethnographic research is a judicious mix of observation, inter­viewing, and archival study. Since other volumes in this series will treat the

Data collection in the field for a ethnographic research

1. ‘Facts’ and ‘reality’ Trained biologists looking at cells under a microscope can come up with accu­rate descriptions of the components of those cells. If

Rapport on field site of ethnographic research

It goes without saying that all readers of this book are wonderful, generous, out­going, lovable people who would be welcome in communities around the world.

Selecting a field site for a ethnographic research

Having subjected yourself to a thorough personal review, you can now apply more objective criteria in deciding where you want to do your research. Some

Begin the ethnographic research with a personal inventory

It is often said that the one piece of equipment that an ethnographic researcher ultimately relies on is him or herself. It is all very

Ethnographic methods: research settings

Ethnographic research can be done wherever people interact in ‘natural’ group settings. Bringing people together for a specific purpose in controlled laboratory settings is a

Ethnography for the twenty-first century

1. The changing research context: technology Participant observation once implied a lone researcher working in a self- contained community, armed only with a notebook and

Ethical considerations in a ethnographic research

1. Levels of ethical considerations relevant for research There are three levels on which ethical considerations bear on the conduct of research: The official, published

Strategies for representing ethnographic data

1. Representing ethnographic data in traditional scholarly form Scientific writing of whatever length typically includes several key elements usually set out in a conventional order.

Analyzing ethnographic data

1. Patterns How do you recognize a pattern? Basically speaking, a true pattern is one that is shared by members of the group (their actual

Ethics and observational research

General questions of research ethics as they apply to ethnography are treated in a later chapter, but a few special points need to be dealt

Observations in public spaces

One of the most characteristic applications of observational research is that which is carried out in public spaces. Indeed, given the nature of this setting,

Observer bias

Ethnographers in general, and observation-based researchers in particular, are frequently criticized for the subjectivity that informs their work. Even the most apparently unobtrusive observation can

The question of validity in observational research

Quantitative researchers can demonstrate both the validity and the reliability of their data through statistical means. ‘Reliability’ is a measure of the degree to which

The process of observational research

‘Observation’ rarely involves a single act. Rather, it is a series of steps that builds toward the regularity and precision inherent in our working definition.

The task of observational research

Observational techniques are suitable for research dealing with specific settings (e.g. a shopping mall, a church, a school); events, which are defined as sequences of

Types of observational research

Although in its earliest manifestations as a research tool observation was sup­posed to be ‘non-reactive’, in fact observation presupposes some sort of contact with the

Source: Gillham Bill (2008), Observation Techniques: Structured to Unstructured, Continuum; Illustrated edition.