Participant Observation

Participant observation is an umbrella term for a range of methods to investigate the practices of individuals and groups in place. These can include participating and observing, engaging in informal conversations, and collecting documentary data. These methods facilitate an exploration of (meanings of) people's everyday actions and behavior, usually from the researched individuals' perspectives.

There is conceptual overlap between participant observation and ethnography. To make a distinction, ethnography may be seen as a research approach that incorporates the methodology, methods, interpretation, and dissemination of research. Participant observation is a (set of) method(s) central to ethnography. The use of participant observation does not necessitate an ethnographic approach, although to date most geographic studies that employ participant observation explicitly have been ethnographic.

Geography has a long, albeit marginalized, history of ethnographic studies based on participant observation. Ethnographic research within geography can be[Page 351] traced back to the origins of the discipline. Like early anthropologists, these ethnographies employed participant observation to understand “exotic” societies, regarded as spatially and temporally distinct, so as to make universal laws about humanity. A more recent and critical history can be traced to the Chicago School of human ecology and strands of humanistic geography.

The cultural turn within human geography arguably instigated a renaissance of qualitative methods, although participant observation remains relatively underused. Participant observation usually is an intensive method that is useful for conducting idiographic specific studies rather than for making generalizable knowledge claims or universal laws.

Because participant observation usually is relatively inductive and intensive, it can provide in-depth holistic understandings of the meaning of people's everyday practices in place. These benefits are also limitations. Intensive participant observation is timeconsuming. Participant observation can, however, make a unique contribution to examining the materiality of everyday life along with discursive representations. Furthermore, although other methods give insights into people's interpretations of their practices, not all action is consciously rationalized. Observing people's practices, and questioning people about the significance of their actions, can lead to deep and holistic understandings.

Participant observation raises interconnected practical, methodological, and ethical issues. The practical issues can be divided into two key aspects: whether the research is overt or covert and what the level of participation and/or observation is. Overt research involves informing participants of the purpose and nature of the research, whereas covert research is undertaken without informing participants. Covert research raises a number of ethical dilemmas such as not giving participants the opportunity to (refuse to) consent to participating. However, this can be ethically tenable in particular circumstances. The reality of research often does not fall neatly into either side of the covert/overt dichotomy. For instance, it is not always possible to be overt with all research participants who may play a limited role in the research. Furthermore, it may be more ethical not to disclose the specifics of the research focus when this would reaffirm negative lines of difference. Levels of participation/observation are a sliding scale from the complete participant, to the participant-as-observer, to the observer-as-participant, to the complete observer. Although different levels of participation are appropriate for various questions and settings, roles often shift during the research processes depending on context.

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