Observations

• Observation

  an observation is a careful, close examination of a participant's real behaviour, rather than what people say they would do

  • when identifying the type of observation, you need to refer to the location, the researcher involvement and participant awareness
• Location

  -naturalistic observations - these take place in a natural environment

  -controlled observations - these take place in controlled environments
• Evaluation of naturalistic observations

  S - high ecological validity

  S - lower demand characteristics

  W - low internal validity
• Evaluation of controlled observations

  S - high internal validity

  W - lower ecological validity

  W - higher demand characteristics
• Awareness

  -covert observations

  • this is where the researcher is not visible to participants
  • the participants are unaware they are being observed

  -overt observations

  • this is where the researcher is visible to participants
  • the participants are aware they are being observed
• Evaluation of covert observations

  S - less demand characteristics

  W - ethical issues
• Evaluation of overt observations

  S - more ethical

  W - higher chance of demand characteristics
• Researcher involvement

  -participant observation - the researcher is part of the group they are observing

  -non-participant observation - the researcher is not part of the group they are observing
• Evaluation of participant observations

  S - higher internal validity

  W - researcher bias
• Evaluation of non-participant observation

  S - less researcher bias

  W - low internal validity
• Observational design and behaviour categories

  observations require operationalised behaviour categories to ensure that they are objective and have high inter-observer reliability

  • this means that the behaviours must be precisely defined and easy to identify, without any overlap or ambiguity
  • a coding sheet will be used to tally the number of times these behaviours occur
• Time and event sampling

  in an observation the researcher must use a systematic way of sampling the participants behaviour (this is not the same as sampling the people involved). There are 2 ways to do this;

  • event sampling
  • time sampling
• Event sampling

  the researchers decide on a specific event relevant to the investigation

  • they record (tally) every time an event/behaviour occurs in a period of time
• Time sampling

  this is where you record the behaviour at set time intervals

  • at the specified time intervals, the researcher will tick/mark one or more categories from the behavioural checklist
  • behaviours observed in between the time sampling frames should be ignored and should not be recorded
• Evaluation of event sampling

  S - more representative

  W - difficult for ongoing behaviours
• Evaluation of time sampling

  S - better for ongoing behaviours

  W - less representative