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 we are concerned with self-observation as a research method,, and one which deals not just, or even mainly, with ‘external’ behaviour.

1. Research and objectivity

Research is commonly viewed as involving the objective appraisal of ‘evidence’ which can be independently checked and, where possible, measured. How can subjective experi­ence ever meet that criterion? It doesn’t and if that is the criterion for the admissibility of research evidence then all our mental experience goes out of the window. In research terms self-observation is a distinct methodology (way of knowing) and the appropriate approach for some areas of human knowledge; if not the only possible one.

We still have to consider why it should be so widely held that research is an ‘objective’ process. While some philoso­phers of science, notably Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), have expounded precisely this case, the main influence on popular understanding is likely to stem from the way research findings are usually presented in the media, without qualification, as proven fact. And this in turn derives from the way academic papers are constructed and the style of presentation employed. These are conventionally written in an ‘objective’ depersonalized style: where the use of first person pronouns (I, we, etc.) is largely excluded (an editor once said to me that it detracted from the authority of the writing). By the same token the passive voice is preferred to the active (‘it was found’ rather than ‘we found’); and so on. Yet the papers are written by individuals, with their own motives, purposes and preferences.

2. Research as ‘adventures of the mind’

Some kinds of research are inextricably individual. In sci­entific research it is those early stages of investigation which Medawar (1964) called ‘adventures of the mind’. It is during these stages that the foundations of what will later be con­structed more formally are laid down. In a sense this is where the real conceptual discoveries are made though rarely reported in that way, being later reconstructed into the formal logic of a scientific paper.

In the arts the process of research is almost entirely made up of these ‘adventures’ experienced as a part of practice, but they may also go unreported because the artist is con­centrating on the practical or conceptual resolution of the creative problem. Particularly in the visual arts there is a resistance to taking a self-observing research stance: a fear that it will interfere with a delicate process, distract the artist from the main purpose, damaging or even destroying the creative spark. Almost certainly a mistaken view it is, none­theless, one that has been firmly held.

That such a process of self-observation might actually add to self-knowledge and facilitate artistic development is only slowly gaining ground (see Gillham and McGilp, 2007). As well as enhancing practice it also offers the potential to develop a new research methodology, as relevant to the social and natural sciences as it is to the ‘subjective’ world of the arts. Certainly in the social sciences the scientific-realist position, so long predominant, is in retreat before an increasing awareness that objective realism is a doubtful commodity when applied not just to people’s (mental) constructions of themselves and their social world, but also to how researchers view social behaviour.

This all sounds very well but needs to be translated into practical detail. We shall argue here that self-observation gives access to material – particularly mental events – that could hardly be obtained in any other way.

3. Research as a creative process

Thoughts, feelings, insights, intentions and discoveries in understanding are all things that are more or less invisible. And usually they go unrecorded, the exceptions typically being fragmentary – and so interesting that one can only regret that more of this material has not been preserved. Ghiselin’s (1985) book dealing with the creative process is made up of fragments of writing by leading creative figures of the past 250 years from across the arts and sciences, which provide a fascinating insight into their ways of working. Of particular note are the commonalities across radically dif­ferent disciplines: for example the role of the unconscious in mathematical creation (Poincare) and poetry (Amy Lowell).

Creativity is much discussed in a facile, abstract fashion which leaves us none the wiser. Here we define it as what characterizes the way that original work of quality is pro­duced: in other words, what is distinctive about people whom we would describe as truly creative? Everyone seems to agree that creativity is to be valued without, at a level of detail, appreciating the conditions, both internal and external, that foster it.

Self-observation provides a way into this level of detailed recording which, as we noted above, has no parallel method. The observer is always present in us; and as with other methods the challenge is to make the process of observation more systematic and analytic in approach.

4. Recording the process

In the busy work of pursuing a particular outcome (whatever it happens to be) the details of process – which may be as important as the result – are often discarded and obscured, irretrievably lost.

But there is more to recording the process than the pre­servation of material that may later be viewed as important. Agnew (1993), a design historian writing about the unrec­orded history of the development of the Spitfire in the 1930s and 1940s, argues for ‘a new kind of comprehensiveness in the most creative stages of design … The insight… is often more general in its implications than the … solution that follows it. All too often the insight may later be entirely lost’ (p. 129).

The act of recording means that those who ‘create* come to understand better how they work so that they can enhance their performance – rather than ‘interfering’ with it.

What should be recorded ?

This material can be divided loosely into internal and external evidence. We shall deal with the latter first. External evidence could of course be ‘observed’ by others, if they were always present. So, it’s anything that can be seen or heard, for example:

• notes, sketches
• letters, reports
• plans, models, prototypes
• photographs, video recordings
• successive revisions (thoughts written down)
• audio recordings (thoughts spoken)
• material by others which has been used in some way
• diary, journal, log-book.

What is apparent here is first, that a deliberate policy of preserving those elements is involved and second, that they have to be stored in a way which renders them accessible – a particular consideration because there may be a lot of material. Crucially there has also to be a conscious habit of keeping a record of those mental events or habits of beha­viour which otherwise would not be externalized at all – evident from some of the items listed above.

Perhaps the most important of these is the log-book (sometimes referred to as a diary or journal) in which are recorded those elements which otherwise fade very quickly, for example:

• origins of ideas (things read or talked about, observed or experienced)
• initial purposes/directions
• hunches, insights, intuitions, i.e. the kinds of thing that are hard to make explicit
• difficulties, uncertainties, problems (and their resolution)
• discoveries, especially reformulations
• refining of ideas and methods – and so on.

Deciding what to record has to err on the generous side; not least because what can appear a minor element at the time (a passing doubt, a simple notion) might turn out to presage more significant consequences.

In many ways it is this recording of ‘in-the-head’ material that is the more important part of the methodology. And it is often only fully appreciated and understood when reviewed as it occurred and in chronological order. This last has its own kind of logic in that the relationship between elements needs to be understood in terms of their sequence in the time-frame, which may not be ‘logical’ in other terms. The great virtue is the recording of the research process as it happens and you get no real awareness of this from reading conventional academic reports. The structure of these is often misleading if one seeks to understand how the research evolved. There are here two levels of discourse, the formal reconstructed logic of an academic paper and what might be described as the ‘chronologic’ of a narrative account. Neither is intrinsically right or wrong, they serve different purposes; but the narrative format constitutes a truer account of the process.

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