Participant Observation: Understanding Society

Participant Observation as the Most Effective Method of Understanding Society

All case studies require either overt or covert observation to collect

the information necessary to complete the study. Both covert and overt

have their advantages and disadvantages; they both add different but

similar ideas and theories to a study. These two methods have been

used in a variety of case studies but the ones that I am going to

focus on are James Patrick’s study of Glasgow gang’s, Laud Humphreys

study of the tea room trade in America and Ann Oakley’s study of first

time pregnancy with women in the UK. I am going to look at how

participant observation was used in these three studies and whether

the researcher used overt or covert observation to achieve the aim of

the case study.

In the first study I will look at is Laud Humphreys study of the tea

room trade in America in which the researcher Laud Humphreys used

covert observation, covert observation is where the researcher doesn’t

allow the person that they are studying to know that they are studying

them, this can be done in a variety of situations but seeing as though

this particular research piece was done on a very delicate subject the

researcher was probably better of to use covert than overt, the

activity that he was studying is illegal in America therefore

ethically the piece of research was wrong and he shouldn’t of taken

part to the level that he did ( his role was as a watch queen to see

if any officials were coming) however sometimes the rules have to be

broken to achieve the results wanted. Also as the researcher took down

car registration plates to see what sort of people actuall...

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...ch on them one good thing about

this is that this way of doing research gets more in depth information

for people as they know that you are researching them and therefore

they are more willing to talk however they also may not it just

depends on the person, Ann Oakley used interviews to do her piece of

research and also used questionnaires she did her research from this

method research is better than covert as the participants are more

likely and more willing to talk to you.

In my opinion overt research is better than covert research as it

allows you to get a more in depth account of the person involved’s

opinions and views and it also gives more information for the piece of

research. Both covert and overt observation techniques are useful in

helping the research to do the research and achieve the result

desired.