Grand Tour Observation

An account of a grand tour observation. Grand tour observations refer to the rich description of a social situation (Spradley, 1980). The social situation for this research is people at the library. To prepare for the grand tour observation, the researcher was driven by the following questions: “who are the people at the library?”, “what are the things people do at the library?”, and “what things are available at the library?”. Below is an account of a grand tour observation conducted by the researcher.
I started by observing the exterior of the library, and after I entered the building, I stayed at the corridor to observe before entering the library. Once in the library, I stayed near the entrance and made observations. At each of the stops,

After which I took my belongings and started to walk to use the restroom. After returning from the restroom, I was looking for another part of the library where I could do observation but found myself going back to the same seat I took before the short break. I stayed there for another one hour before I ended the participant observation session and left the library.

Challenges of being an observer. While doing fieldwork at the library, the researcher faced two challenges to doing the participant observation effectively. First, remaining unnoticed in the covert activity. He had to walk naturally and be mindful of not staring at someone's activity too long, and consequently he often could not see clearly what the items on someone’s table were. Also, he could not walk around the same area/persons more than once in the same direction lest people at the library start to notice the researcher walking by them more than once and become suspicious.
Second, remembering what was observed when walking and observing without holding a notepad in hand. The researcher needed to find a place (e.g. a lounge chair) to write down what he could remember soon after the

Related to research involving human subjects, the Belmont Report published in 1979 listed three basic ethical principles, which serve as a basic justification for the many ethical prescriptions and evaluations of human actions. First, respect for persons. This means that individuals should be treated as autonomous agents and that persons with diminished autonomy are entitled to protection. This demands that subjects enter into the research voluntarily and with adequate information. Second, beneficence, which means making efforts to secure the subjects’ well-being. It is an obligation of not harming the subjects as well as maximizing possible benefits and minimizing possible harms. Third, justice, in terms of "fairness in distribution" or "what is deserved", which means that equals ought to be treated equally. For example, the selection of research subjects should not be based on their classes or their manipulability but for reasons related to the problem being studied (“The Belmont Report,”