Participant Observation In Ethnographic Research

Participant Observation

Participant observation (PO) is a qualitative method that derives from ethnography. It usually lives among distant people to understand their way of life with a mixture of involvement and detachment. By emerging oneself into the environment, PO helps to focus on understanding the nature, more than just assessing the magnitude and distribution of phenomena quantitatively. For writers such as Spradley, he used the term PO to refer to the general approach of fieldwork in ethnographic research and Agar used PO as a cover term for all the observation and formal and informal interviewing in which anthropologists engage (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2001). Hence, the term is accepted universally as the central and defining method of

This method allows researchers to have higher flexibility to conduct interviews with the targeted community and related people. The observations work can be conducted at multiple times, if there are any unclear part, the researcher may conduct a follow-up interview in another fieldwork. Besides, the field study allows the researcher to be closer to the targeted groups and gain an intimate familiarity with them over a period of time. Sometimes there might be an opportunity to participating in unscheduled events. Questions can be raised and able to get to know what to ask and who can answer you the question immediately. These occasions allow the researcher to gain an intuitive understanding of the meaning of the data (Laurier, 2003). Sometimes, informants among the local groups are more willing to share private information. This research method is respondent led in nature, thus, it has ethical advantages in which it allows the informants to speak for themselves. The hierarchical relationship mostly happened in most quantitative researches could be avoided (Mulhall,

Firstly, conducting a research with strategy can be expensive in terms of money can time. You the opportunity cost of doing a field work is high as it is relatively time-consuming (Bernard, 1994). The researcher might need to travel to other places away from hometown and stay for months or even years to gather data. For example, Sealing Cheng who published On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea in 2010, has stayed in South Korea’s US military camp area to study the migrant prostitute for her research over two years (Cheng, 2011). However, the scope and duration are highly varied on the research funding and interest of the