Observation Research: Definition

• A combination of a first-person and a second-person account, which takes place in a naturalistic setting, of the actions and behaviours of a specific group of people
• Most common in communications/cultural studies à is a participant observation (qualitative research)

Observation Research: Uses

• Examine structure and functions of social formation
• Learn components and operations from inside (functionalist)
• Example
  • Actual operations of news rooms, how do they assemble the news? How are they affected by budget cuts?
• Examine culture of social formation
  • Learn cultural or ideological aspects (aka ethnography) à interpretive
  • Example
    • The culture of news rooms
    • All have same tastes, why are they different?
• Examine how structures affect outcomes
  • Watch how product is created, from start to finish
• If using any specific social information as case study of larger social phenomenon
• Major assumption
  • Social formation is representative of all similar formations
  • Intangible qualities of social formation are representative of all similar formations
  • Knowing something about this social formation tells us something about all similar social formations

Observation Research: Advantages

• working with specific social formation you wish to study (reliability – primary data)
• Extraordinarily source of data, more than any other method everything you observe, hear, smell is data (reliability – difficult to fake, highly detailed)

Observation Research: Disadvantages

• fewer sources / less data collected than surveys (reliability – data may be idiosyncratic to social formation)
• Best conducted by lead researcher, bring expertise to the field (cost/time – cannot be done quickly)
• Cannot be used with unwilling/at risk populations (access/ethics – cannot force people to participate