Ethnographic Observation Assignment
Ethnographic Observation Assignment
This assignment has 3 parts:
1. Carefully read the document “Qualitative Methods and Field Research,” in this folder on
our course website. It will tell you a lot about the sociological research method of participant
observation, including how to do it properly, what pitfalls to avoid, and what you’re aiming
for in your finished data set.
2. Conduct one 30-minute observation in a public workplace. This is your field research
setting.
• Why public? Because you have every right to spend 30 minutes in a public setting.
• Consider doing your observation in a site where people commonly sit and linger, such as a
coffeehouse or café. It will be easier to conduct a quality observation if you fit in and do not
distu
the setting.
• Look for detail in your observation.
• While observing, jot down a
ief set of notes. You don’t need to write down everything you
see while on the scene, as you will develop these after you leave the field research setting. If
you are working hard to write down every since detail of what you see while you are
observing, you will probably miss a lot that you would otherwise see!
• I do NOT recommend taking your initial set of notes on a laptop computer; unless many
others are also on laptop computers, you will stand out, thus distu
ing the setting. It’s better
to take your initial notes on a little pad of paper, or even your own arm.
3. Once you leave your field research setting, sit down at a computer develop your
ief notes
into 2 solid single-spaced pages of field notes (12 point Times font, please).
• Describe what you saw, heard, and felt in as much detail as possible. Aim for thick
description: descriptions rich in context and detail.
• You can also include descriptions of the research process—finding the observation site, your
own actions and interactions in the research setting. Field research is as much about your role
in the situation as it is about who and what you’re observing—it’s about the outside (what
you see and hear) AND the inside (what you do and feel). By being there, you are a part of
the situation, thus should also be a part of the observation.
• BRING THE SETTING ALIVE. Your aim is to make the reader (in this case, your instructor)
feel as if they are at the field research site with you.
• Your notes should be in full sentences and paragraphs, NOT bullet-points.
• Take care to use proper spelling and grammar.
What you submit is your two page, single-spaced, 12 point Times font, thick description IN
FULL SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS (not bullet points) of what you saw, heard, did, and
felt in your 30-minute observation. Enjoy. :)
Qualitative Methods and Field Research
Qualitative Methods: Observing, Participating, Listening
With qualitative methods, instead of capturing a number—something you can count (as with
quantitative methods)—you strive to capture the quality of the situation. A good example of a
kind of qualitative research you might do is field research, where you put yourself in a
situation, distu
it as little as possible, and gather as much information as you can. You
watch—carefully, without distu
ing the natural flow of things. You talk with people casually, in
the flow of their normal activities, in places and in ways that they are comfortable, putting you
closer to the genuine heart of things. And you try to stay as objective as you can, but you
ecognize that you are human too, and you contribute to the situation—to the scene.
Participant Observation
You use participant observation if you want to leave natural social processes, in their natural
setting, relatively undistu
ed. Because you want to see the world as your research subjects see
it, and you want to understand how they interpret it. You want to avoid the artificial and the
unnatural, and see the context. Participant observation is, specifically, a qualitative method
for gathering data that involves developing a sustained relationship with people while they
go about their normal activities.
The first thing you do when you decide on participant observation for your method is this:
you choose your role. You decide how deep you’re going to go. What KIND of participant
observation will you do?
• Will it be complete observation—just watching, not getting involved at all - where you try
to see things as they happen, without actively participating? In this case, everyone knows
who you are. You’re the researcher. And even if you’re only observing, you still need to be
aware of a possible reactive effect; you might change the situation just by being there, even if
you’re just quietly sitting in the corner. Think about it—if you knew that another student in one
of your in-person classes was a researcher, NOT a student, just there to observe, to see how
students behave in a university setting—might that change your behavior? If it did, then there
is a reactive effect of her presence.
• Will it be mixed participation and observation—where you’re watching what happens,
ut you’re also a part of the group? This is the most common kind of participant
observation: to both participate AND observe. You tell some people in the group that you’re
doing research, but then you sort of become a participating member of the group. This can be
ethically advantageous; because you’ve been at least somewhat open about your status as a
esearcher, your subjects can decide whether or not they want to reveal everything. And
ecause you’ve been open, and people know that your motivation to be a part of the group is to
do research, you can back out of stuff that you feel is unethical or dangerous. Those are both
good things: giving your subjects a fuller awareness of the real situation gives them the ability
to freely consent (or not), to give full information, and it lets you off the hook if you don’t
want to fully participate in group activities. If they didn’t know that you were a researcher,
they’d wonder why you were acting weird. Because they know, so you can do as you wish.
• Will it be complete participation—where you operate as a fully functioning member of
the group setting? Most of the time, when you’re a complete participant, it’s a secret that
you’re doing research. If people don’t know you’re doing research, and you don’t want them to
know, you can’t take notes in front of them. You have to hide. Write notes in your car, or speak
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them secretly into your hand held recording device (phones can work well for this). And even
if you look like a real full participant, you’re not, and you probably don’t share the same
motives or interest that the other people in the situation have. So you don’t really understand
completely. Some people, like sociologist Kai Erikson, say that covert, or secret participation is
always unethical, because the definition of the situation is that you’re lying to people. And so
you should only do it in public places. And if people suspect that you’re up to something, or if
you change the group dynamic, it could ruin your research, and cause serious distu
ance to
your life. Be careful with complete participation.
Complete participation get you into some interesting situations. For example, the case of Laud
Humphreys, who did a study of the “tearoom trade.” This became a very famous study. Laud
Humphreys graduated from a Seminary in 1955, and he was a priest for a while. He was ma
ied
to a woman for 20 years XXXXXXXXXX), but he eventually came out as gay. When he was about to
get his Ph.D., some people in his department tried to take the Ph.D. away from him, because they
thought his research was unethical. That’s how seriously this is viewed. But he did finally get to
keep the Ph.D. and he was a professor of Sociology at Pitzer College for 15 years. So his
dissertation was called Tearoom Trade, and it was an ethnographic study of anonymous male-
male sexual encounters in public toilets. Here it’s “tea-rooming,” in England it’s “cottaging.”
How was he able to get his data? He served as the lookout while these men had various kinds of
sex in the bathroom. And the really revealing part of his research—his big contribution—was
that over 50% of his subjects were outwardly heterosexual ma
ied men. Their private and
public lives didn’t match up. This is a really important finding! But how did he find out that
these men having sex with men in the bathroom were straight men? Did he ask them after they
were done? No. He waited until they left the bathroom, watched them leave, wrote down their
license plate numbers, and then, a year later, he visited them at home, also under false pretenses,
saying he was doing some survey. And he had a look at what their home lives were like. A lot of
them were apparently heterosexual ma
ied men. Is that ethical? Would you want someone doing
that to you? Probably not. But we keep on using that research, because it showed us something
eally interesting. He couldn’t have got that information if he had told those men he was doing
esearch. No way. He was a complete participant. And he lied. He didn’t tell the people he was
watching that he was doing research. Now, because he was a covert participant— hiding the fact
that he was doing research—he didn’t distu
the setting at all.
Entering the Field and Managing Relationships
How do you get access to the place and the people you want to interact with? You could try just
getting to know some people in the situation. Say you want to do an ethnography of a coffee
house. You could write a formal letter to the manager, but you could also just start hanging out
there, and talking with the employees. If they get to know you a bit first, and they like you, they