4.6: Observations

Learning Objectives

1. List the various types of observational research methods and distinguish between each.
2. Describe the strengths and weakness of each observational research method.

Observational Research

Generally, the goal of observational research is to obtain a snapshot of specific characteristics of an individual, group, or setting. There are several decisions that a researcher must make before starting to actually observe participants. These related to how structured the situation will be, how aware the participants will be of the observation, and how involved the observer will be in the situation. Each of these will be discussed below.

Observation Structure

The setting of observations can range from naturalistic to structured. Naturalistic observation is an observational method that involves observing people’s behavior in the environment in which it typically occurs, which makes this data collection method is a type of field research (as opposed to a type of laboratory research). Jane Goodall’s famous research on chimpanzees is a classic example of naturalistic observation. Dr. Goodall spent three decades observing chimpanzees in their natural environment in East Africa. She examined such things as chimpanzee’s social structure, mating patterns, gender roles, family structure, and care of offspring by observing them in the wild. However, naturalistic observation could more simply involve observing shoppers in a grocery store, children on a school playground, or psychiatric inpatients in their wards.

In structured observations, the investigator still makes careful observations of one or more specific behaviors in a particular setting. However, instead of a typical environment with natural behaviors, the setting is structured in some way. The researcher may observe people in the laboratory environment, or in a natural setting (like a classroom setting) that the researcher has structured some way. For example, a researcher could have a confederate drop their backpack in front of the library as the confederate passes a potential participant; this would be a natural setting. Alternatively, the researcher could observe participants as they sit in classroom laboratory while the overhead lights are slowly dimmed to see when (or if!) the participant would get up to check things out. One of the primary benefits of structured observation is that it is far more efficient than naturalistic observation. The researchers are focused on specific behaviors, and often times the environment is structured to encourage the behaviors of interest which again means that researchers do not have to invest as much time in waiting for the behaviors of interest to naturally occur. Finally, researchers using this approach can clearly exert greater control over the environment. However, when researchers exert more control over the environment it may make the environment less natural which decreases external validity; in other words, it is less clear for instance whether structured observations made in a laboratory environment will generalize to a real world environment.

Participant Awareness

Researchers engaged in observation usually make their observations as unobtrusively as possible so that participants are not aware that they are being studied. Such an approach is called disguised observation. Ethically, this method of data collection without informed consent is considered to be acceptable if the participants remain anonymous and the behavior occurs in a public setting where people would not normally have an expectation of privacy. Grocery shoppers putting items into their shopping carts, for example, are engaged in public behavior that is easily observable by store employees and other shoppers. For this reason, most researchers would consider it ethically acceptable to observe them for a study. On the other hand, one of the arguments against the ethicality of the naturalistic observation of bathroom behavior, like hand-washing or talking on the phone in a stall, is that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in a public restroom and that this expectation was violated.

Alternatively, researchers can conduct undisguised observation where the participants are made aware of the researcher presence and monitoring of their behavior. However, one concern with undisguised naturalistic observation is reactivity. Reactivity, sometimes referred to as the Hawthorne Effect, refers to when a measure changes participants’ behavior. In the case of undisguised observation, participants may act differently than they normally would. For instance, participants being observed at the gym may act much differently, maybe lifting more weight or running faster or longer than they normally would, if the participants knew that someone was observing you and recording your behaviors. This would make the observations less valid since we can't be sure how different the participants' behavior was. However, we now know that people often become used to being observed and with time they begin to behave naturally in the researcher’s presence. In other words, over time people habituate to being observed.

Naturalistic observation can easily accommodate either disguised or undisguised observations. When observing adults play basketball on an outdoor court, you could sit on a nearby bench and watch unobtrusively (disguised), or you could sit on a share near the court and let them know that you're keeping statistics on their playing. Structured observations could include undisguised observations, but it makes more sense to be disguised so that participants aren't reactive to everything that could be an intervention. For example, people probably wouldn't act normally if you said that you were observing people to how helpful they were, and then dropped your backpack.

Observer Involvement

Another approach to data collection in observational research is participant observation. In participant observation, researchers become active participants in the group or situation they are studying. The basic rationale for participant observation is that there may be important information that is only accessible to, or can be interpreted only by, someone who is an active participant in the group or situation.

Just how naturalistic and structured observations could have participant aware of being observed (undisguised observation) or unaware (disguised observation), participant observation can also be disguised or not. Rosenhan’s study (1973) of the experience of people in a psychiatric ward would be considered disguised participant observation because Rosenhan and his pseudopatients were admitted into psychiatric hospitals on the pretense of being patients so that they could observe the way that psychiatric patients are treated by staff. The staff and other patients were unaware of their true identities as researchers. In another famous example of disguised participant observation, Leon Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated a doomsday cult known as the Seekers, whose members believed that the apocalypse would occur on December 21, 1954. Interested in studying how members of the group would cope psychologically when the prophecy inevitably failed, they carefully recorded the events and reactions of the cult members in the days before and after the supposed end of the world. Unsurprisingly, the cult members did not give up their belief but instead convinced themselves that it was their faith and efforts that saved the world from destruction. Festinger and his colleagues later published a book about this experience, which they used to illustrate the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger et al., 1956). Once again there are important ethical issues to consider with disguised participant observation. First no informed consent can be obtained and second deception is being used. The researcher is deceiving the participants by intentionally withholding information about their motivations for being a part of the social group they are studying. But sometimes disguised participation is the only way to access a protective group (like a cult). Further, disguised participant observation is less prone to reactivity than undisguised participant observation.

In undisguised participant observation, the researchers become a part of the group they are studying but they disclose their true identity as researchers to the group under investigation. An example of undisguised participant observation comes from a study by sociologist Amy Wilkins on a university-based religious organization that emphasized how happy its members were (Wilkins, 2008). Wilkins spent 12 months attending and participating in the group’s meetings and social events, and she interviewed several group members. In her study, Wilkins identified several ways in which the group “enforced” happiness—for example, by continually talking about happiness, discouraging the expression of negative emotions, and using happiness as a way to distinguish themselves from other groups.

One of the primary benefits of participant observation is that the researchers are in a much better position to understand the viewpoint and experiences of the people they are studying when they are a part of the social group. The primary limitation with this approach is that the mere presence of the observer could affect the behavior of the people being observed. While this is also a concern with all types of observation, additional concerns arise when researchers become active members of the social group they are studying because that they may change the social dynamics and/or influence the behavior of the people they are studying. Similarly, if the researcher acts as a participant observer there can be concerns with biases resulting from developing relationships with the participants. Concretely, the researcher may become less objective resulting in more experimenter bias.

Collecting Data

In addition to reactivity, one of the difficulties of doing observational research is accurately and thoroughly collecting the data. To do this, researchers clearly define a set of target behaviors, categorize participants individually in terms of which behavior they have engaged in, and the number of times they engaged in each behavior. The observers might even record the duration of each behavior.

There are few things that observers can do to help with this.

First, specific operational definitions are important. If you would like to observe how many people smile at a baby, you have to precisely define what a smile is. Does a smile include showing teeth? Is it any upturning of the mouth? Must the eyes get a little crinkly? How crinkly? You can see how difficult this might end up being! Practicing (with videos or a pilot test) can help with these issues as the target behaviors must be defined in such a way that different observers will code them in the same way. This difficulty with coding illustrates the issue of interrater reliability. Researchers are expected to demonstrate the interrater reliability of their coding procedure by having multiple raters code the same behaviors independently and then showing that the different observers are in close agreement.

As an example of operational definitions of observed behavior, Kraut and Johnston (1979) wanted to study bowlers’ reactions to their shots, both when they were facing the pins and then when they turned toward their companions. But what “reactions” should they observe? Based on previous research and their own pilot testing, Kraut and Johnston created a list of reactions that included “closed smile,” “open smile,” “laugh,” “neutral face,” “look down,” “look away,” and “face cover” (covering one’s face with one’s hands). Kraut and Johnston video recorded a subset of their participants’ reactions and had two observers independently code them. The two observers showed that they agreed on the reactions that were exhibited 97% of the time, indicating good interrater reliability. During the actual study, the observers spoke into an audio recorder, describing the reactions they observed. Among the most interesting results of this study was that bowlers rarely smiled while they still faced the pins. They were much more likely to smile after they turned toward their companions, suggesting that smiling is not purely an expression of happiness but also a form of social communication.

Second, limiting your observations might be necessary. You can limit who you observe; rather than observing everyone in a restaurant, you could observe one person or one table. You could limit what behaviors you are observing; rather than observing every behavior that is happening in the restaurant (even at that one table), you could focus on only smiling or only interactions with the baby. Finally, you can limit your observations by time; rather than observing for an hour, you could observe for two minutes then take a five minute break; you would repeat that cycle so that you end up observing for an hour, but you don't have to keep focus non-stop. As you might have guessed, these options can be combined. If you tried to observe a whole restaurant, every interaction with babies, for an hour, you'd probably miss a lot of what's going on. Instead, you could record every interaction with one baby for 1-minute intervals, with a break of 3 minutes, for the whole time that the baby is at the restaurant.

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References

Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press.

Kraut, R. E., & Johnston, R. E. (1979). Social and emotional messages of smiling: An ethological approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1539–1553.

Rosenhan, D. L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 250–258.

Wilkins, A. (2008). “Happier than Non-Christians”: Collective emotions and symbolic boundaries among evangelical Christians. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71, 281–301.