What is Participant observation?
'''Participant observation''' is a way of getting [[information]] about a group of people. A person doing participant observation will live with a group of people in their normal [[environment]]. They do this so they can learn about that groups way of life. One of the uses of participant observation is to understand the world from the [[point of view]] of a person from that group. This is done by watching the things they do every day. The [[process|product]] of participant observation is normally a piece of [[writing]] about what the researcher has seen. It is called [[ethnography]]. Participant observers can live with the group for months or many years. The longer the researcher is with the group, the better the information they learn will be. In the first half of the [[20th century]], [[Anthropology|anthropologists]] [[Bronislaw Malinowski]], [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Edward Evans-Prichard]] started using participant observation. It is now the main way [[research]] is done by [[culture|cultural]] anthropologists. == Covert participation observation == In Covert participation observation, the researcher lives with a group but does not tell the group that they are studying them. The research is done in [[secret]]. This method is good because the people will not act differently than they normally do if they do not known they are being studied. One problem with covert participation observation is that it can be [[Ethics|unethical]]. The subject cannot give the researcher their [[consent]] because they do not know they are being studied. == Overt participation observation == In overt participation observation, the researcher tells the group of people that they are being studied. A problem with this method is that people may change the way they act if they know they are being studied. Overt Participation Observation does not have the ethical problems of covert observation and lets the researcher watch the people [[lie|lying]] about what they are doing. == Related pages == * [[Educational psychology]] == Refere