For some types of research there may be no good alternative to participant observation. Certain deviant groups or behaviour would not be possible to study using any other method. Participant observation is particularly effective if a clearly identifiable group is being studied who are prepared to have an observer present, this allows observation of social behaviour in a natural setting in small scale situations.
Further advantages of the usefulness of participant observation are that it tackles a number of sensitive situations that a scientific approach of surveys and questionnaires would not. Participant allows the researcher to explore the issues of the particular group on a much personal basis, allowing reasoning and understanding for a fair conclusion. Furthermore participant observation is useful carried out before a survey to help design questionnaires and identify issues.
There are a number of different ways of carrying out participant observation. Some researchers for example hardly participate at all in the group they are observing while others are very much a part of the group. Some observers announce who they are and explain their research to their research subjects to the group; which is overt and some observers act secretively pretending to be a group member and write down what they observe; this is covert.
An example of covert participant observation that has been carried out is James Patrick’s research. The purpose of the research was to discover what life was like in a Glasgow gang. An example of overt participant observation is Eileen Barker’s study in “The making of a Moonie” (1984) where she investigated into the Unification church to discover if participants were ‘brainwashed.’
Participant observations however also has disadvantages to its ‘usefulness.’ The problem is representativeness. It is not possible to generalise as the research carried out only gives information about a small group of people. Reliability is also a problem, the research depends on interpretation and the research carried out does not remain objective, the researcher may get to involved and lose sight of the initial purpose of the research; the term “going native.” A particular problem for overt observation (but also covert) is that the observer’s presence may inhibit the behaviour of the group; called the ‘Hawthorne effect,’ thus the research becoming invalid. Alike in James Patrick’s research, for covert observation there faces obvious problems of moral issues and confidentiality of sensitive information, is it right to deceive people. The researcher may also put themselves in danger because of this. Moreover, apart from the obvious reason of the research process being very time consuming and expensive there is a problem of access to the group, staying in the group and leaving the group and yet there leaves further areas of social life which cannot be observed.
To evaluate the usefulness of participant observation I would say that despite the various issues that need to be addressed participant observation can be a worthwhile part of research, exploring various issues and providing a true picture of what is being studied. However, I would say that the observer would need use triangulation to incorporate other forms of research in order to come to an accurate conclusion. For example quantitative information from secondary data such as official statistics to make generalisations and identify trends and patterns to reach a more objective conclusion.
