observations

Question 1

non participant observation?

Answer 1

observer watched or listens from a distance, doesn’t interact with participants being observed. this is more likely to be objective
- covert

Question 2

participant observation?

Answer 2

observer apart of the group, interacting, participating with the group being studied
- mag gain special insights
more likely to be overt this can impact participants behaviour to be seen in a better light
- overt

Question 3

what’s the issue with covert observations?

Answer 3

participants cannot give their consent and may feel their privacy has been invaded, therefore important to observe in public as this is acceptable

Question 4

unstructured observation?

Answer 4

researcher records all relevant behaviours but has no system, the problem with this is there maybe too much to record and may only record what’s visible or eye catching which may not necessarily be the most important behaviours.

Question 5

structured observation?

Answer 5

• researcher needs to break down the series of behaviour into separate behavioural components/categories
• to do this we operationalise the action which means we break sown the behaviour into different components
• preferable to gain more objective set if data as you can use various systems to organise the observations

Question 6

techniques of structured method of observing?

Answer 6

1. time sampling - researcher records behaviour in a given time frame (every 16 seconds)
2. event sampling - count is kept of the number of times a certain behaviour occurs

Question 7

observer bias ?

Answer 7

difficult for researcher to remain objective as what they observe is distorted by their expectations of what is likely to be seen or expected to see. therefore many researchers observe in pairs as this reduces the risk of observer bias.