12537317
Description
Mind Map by Ronnie Barter, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Ronnie Barter
almost 7 years ago
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Participant Observation Advantages
and Disadvantages
- Advantages
- Validity
- What people say they do in
questionnaires is different from
what they may do.
- Produces rich qualitative
data
- What people say they do in
questionnaires is different from
what they may do.
- Insight
- Allows sociologist to feel
empathy for participants.
- Gives insight into peoples
private and un-influenced lives
- Allows sociologist to feel
empathy for participants.
- Flexibility
- Sociologists don't start with
a set hypothesis
- Sociologists may
change their mind and
can alter their research
accordingly
- Sociologists don't start with
a set hypothesis
- Practical Advantages
- May be the only way to study
certain groups
- Such as criminals
- Such as religious sects
- Such as criminals
- Allows sociologist to
build rapport with those
being studied
- May be the only way to study
certain groups
- Validity
- Disadvantages
- Practical Disadvantages
- Time consuming as
well as costly
- Personally stressful
and demanding
- Requires
observational
skills
- Personal characteristics may
cause issues with being
covert
- Groups may be able to refuse
or restrict access
- Time consuming as
well as costly
- Ethical issues
- Covert observation creates
ethical difficulties as it
intrinsically requires
deception
- Some groups may not have the ability to
refuse participant obeervation and they
may not consent to being observed
- Covert observation creates
ethical difficulties as it
intrinsically requires
deception
- Representitiveness
- Due to the cost and the
amount of time it
would take very few
people can be
observed
- Lack of representativeness
leads to an inability to
accurately/effectively
generalise
- "Internally" valid
insights are not
externally valid
- Due to the cost and the
amount of time it
would take very few
people can be
observed
- Reliability
- Reliability is the ability to
repeat a research
method and get
similar/the same results
- Participant observation
depends on the skills of the
researcher meaning that it
would be difficult for a
different researcher to
replicate it
- A groups actions may be due to a variety of
different pre-existing reasons which are
impossible to control for
- Reliability is the ability to
repeat a research
method and get
similar/the same results
- Bias
- Researchers run the risk of...
- "Going native"
- Loyalty or fear of reprisal may
push a sociologist to hide
sensitive information
- Sociologists may romanticise a
group and come to see them as
an underdog and justify their
actions
- "Going native"
- Researchers run the risk of...
- Validity
- Validity may be damaged as
sociologists decide what is
worth recording
- A sociologist
may only
record what
fits their
prejudices
- May not create
a "naturalistic"
account
- A sociologist
may only
record what
fits their
prejudices
- The Hawthorne
Effect damages
validity
- Validity may be damaged as
sociologists decide what is
worth recording
- Lack of structure
- Interactionalists favour
participant observation as they
see society on a small scale
- Structural sociologists (such as
marxists) reject this arguing that
the observer tends to ignore the
wider structural forces changing
our behaivour
- Structuralists believe that
looking at life through the eyes
of the actor will never give us
the complete picture
- For example if the actors aren't aware of
structural influences in their life
- For example if the actors aren't aware of
structural influences in their life
- Interactionalists favour
participant observation as they
see society on a small scale
- Practical Disadvantages
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