Participant observation

A topic in research methodology

Observers may take different roles in research. The participant observer observes from within the activity.

"The participant observer gathers data by participating in the daily life of the group or organization he studies. He [sic] watches the people he is studying to see what situations they ordinarily meet and how they behave in them. He enters into conversation with some or all of the participants in these situations and discovers their interpretations of the events he has observed."

Becker, 1958: 652

The observer may be an existing member of a group prior to taking on a researcher role (and so be a participant-as-observer). Alternatively, the researcher may join the group for the purposes of observation (and be an observer-as-participant). If other members of the group were not aware of the observer role, this would amount to covert observation.

The decision whether observation should be participant observation must relate back to the purposes of the research and the paradigmatic assumptions underpinning the study.

In positivist research, which often follow the model of the natural sciences, it may be felt that the researcher needs to be distinct from the observed (the object of research).

However, in interpretivist research, it is often considered that collecting insightful data depends upon intersubjectivity, and that the researcher is the key data collection instrument: a unique human instrument. Whilst the presence of the observer will have an effect on the activity being observed, this is considered necessary to collect the kind of data sought.

As pointed out long ago by the social anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, an outsider can never fully particpate in the lives of another social group as if an insider,

"This brings me to what anthropologists sometimes speak of as participant-observation. By this they mean that in so far as it is both possible and convenient they live the life of the people among whom they are doing their research….I found it useful if I wanted to understand how and why Africans are doing certain things to do them myself: I had a hut and byre like theirs; I went hunting with with spear and bow and arrow; I learnt to make pots; I consulted oracles; and so forth. But clearly one has to recognise that there is a certain pretence in such attempts at participation, and people do not always appreciate them. One enters into another culture and withdraws from it at the same time. One cannot really become a Zande or a Nuer or a Bedouin Arab, and the best compliment one can pay them is to remain apart from them in essentials. In any case one always remains oneself, inwardly a member of one's own society and a sojourner in a strange land. Perhaps it would be better to say that one lives in two different worlds of thought at the same time, in categories and concepts and values which cannot easily be reconciled. One becomes, at least temporarily, a sort of double marginal person, alienated from both worlds."

Evans-Pritchard, 1976

Source cited:

• Becker, H. S. (1958). Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation. American Sociological Review, 23(6), 652-660. doi: 10.2307/2089053
• E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1976) Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Abridged with an introduction by Eva Gillies. Clarendon Press. Oxford