Interpreting Social and Behavioral Research

A Guide and Workbook Based on Excerpts from Journals

Linda Dorsten, Linda E Dorsten

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781884585012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351969901
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1996. This book is designed to help students acquire basic skills needed to comprehend social and behavioural science research reports. These skills are needed to understand research results that we confront in our everyday lives in magazines, newspapers, on television, and elsewhere. It includes a guide and a workbook.

Topic 10
Participant Observation

METHODOLOGICAL SUMMARY

When behaviors of individuals are of interest, a useful method of data collection is observational analysis. Although questions posed to individuals can provide information about their behavior, observation is a more direct approach.

A participant observer (sometimes called a complete participant) is a researcher who is completely immersed in the regular activities of the group under study, and is known as a member of the group rather than as a researcher. Other types of observers include complete observers (not involved as a group member), and partial observers (observing and participating as a member but known as a researcher).

The participant observer might be a member of the group to be observed prior to developing a study. Sometimes the researcher joins the group in order to conduct a study.

An advantage of concealing identity as a researcher is that the participant observer interacts with others in a normal fashion, and is able to obtain information about the group that might otherwise not be revealed. Participation by the researcher could affect the event being studied. However, not disclosing identity as a researcher poses an ethical issue — should members of a group be studied without their permission? Also, being a member of the group being observed probably influences the objectivity of the observer.

EXCERPTS FROM THE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Everyday Life in Nursing Homes

1. This is a preliminary report on a sociological research project in which I worked as a nursing assistant (or nurses’ aide) in a series of nursing homes in the United States… While men may own and direct nursing homes, it is not a white man’s land inside… Initially, I indicated on my job applications that I was a researcher interested in studying nursing homes… [N]ot once was I offered a job. Eventually, I began to emphasize my training as a nursing assistant rather than as a researcher. Using this strategy, I was soon employed… yet… my presence was never without suspicion. It was one of the administrators who …asked, “Why would a white guy want to work for these kind of wages?”

2. I worked in both private and state-subsidized homes. Meeting people in different homes disrupted my image of nursing home life as a static existence. One does not ‘end up’ in a nursing home; one proceeds on a path that is the consequence of social policy and the embeddedness of nursing homes within the organizational model of business and industry. In the United States, care is based on ability to pay. Long-term patients tell about living through the phases of Medicare, private resources (if any), bankruptcy, and public aid. Given present economic arrangements for long-term care, a patient moves along a path: the more time in long term care, the poorer one becomes.

3. Many patients told me of their fears as those last weeks of Medicare drew near and, for example, that “damn hip wouldn’t heal.” Every day Grace DeLong asked me to hand her checkbook and bank statements. At the time she had about $10,000 in life savings, having worked as a secretary all of her life. She stared at the book for long periods every day, as though to clutch those savings. She lived fearing that they would be drained from her. She had seen it happen to others. …Grace DeLong, seeing it coming and clenching her checkbook, used to go on and on in her fear; her pleas were quite high-pitched and frenzied: “Get me out of here! I can’t stay here! I’ve got to get out of here!” A passer-by or someone who had only a fleeting contact with her might interpret her clamor as senile ranting. But she was afraid of losing that $10,000. She had no one at home to care for her, and felt trapped.

4. The women and men I met at the expensive home started out in the posh two lower floors. When their money had run out they were moved to the public aid wings, there to receive noticeably inferior care. The management had made it clear that they preferred more short-term Medicare patients, since these patients were worth more. One could feel a murmur of fear among the public aid patients that many would be asked to leave or go to another home. No doubt this would happen to some. I know because I met women and men in the poor homes who had started as private pay residents in other homes and had been forced to leave them. Meeting them made me understand that there is a distinct economic progression in nursing home life — the longer one stays the more impoverished one becomes, and the more unstable one’s environment becomes.

5. I came to change my image of nursing home life as a static enterprise. It is not sitting in a chair ‘doing nothing.’ Rather than being passive, it is always a process. The policies that shape this environment inform every moment of nursing home life. Each person is situated somewhere on an overall turbulent path. Each person sits in a chair, or lies in a bed, often appearing motionless, but is moving and being moved, however silently, through the society…. Their [nursing assistants’ and patients’] standpoint, I conclude, is often opposed to the organizational logic of business that increasingly encases nursing home life.

Source: Reprinted with permission from Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 23, no. 12, pages 1287–1295. Timothy Diamond, “Social Policy and Everyday Life in Nursing Homes: A Critical Ethnography” 1986, Elsevier Science Ltd., Pergamon Imprint, Oxford, England.

Exercise for Topic 10

FACTUAL QUESTIONS

1. The researcher first attempted to be which of the following: participant observer, complete observer, or partial observer? Explain.
   
   
   
2. Which type of observer did the researcher finally become? (See the choices in question 1.) Explain.
   
   
   
3. Why was the researcher viewed with suspicion?
   
   
   
4. What group members did he observe?
   
   
   
5. According to the researcher, is life in nursing homes static or a process? Explain.
   
   
   

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

• 6. What was the purpose of the study, as suggested by the findings?
  
  
  
• 7. Speculate on advantages and disadvantages of using participant observation for the research purpose that you identified for question 6.
  
  
  
• 8. What type of insights did patients such as Grace Delong provide?
  
  
  
• 9. Do you think that the researcher’s interactions with the patients and staff would have been the same if he had revealed his identify as a researcher to them? Explain.
  
  
  
• 10. In your opinion, is disclosing one’s identity after completing a study an acceptable trade-off between (a) not disclosing at the beginning so as not to lose information and (b) informing subjects of their involvement?
  
  
  

Topic 11
Nonparticipant Observation

METHODOLOGICAL SUMMARY

If a participant observer interacts with the group being studied, the interaction might influence the social event under study (see Topic 10). However, a researcher could study an event without becoming a part of it.

Nonparticipant observation, sometimes called a complete observation, allows observations to be made without making the subjects aware that they are being studied. It usually is undertaken in public settings, where the researcher is unlikely to know most other people. The subjects might not even know they are part of a research project. !

For example, sitting in a shopping mall to observe patterns of communication is not very likely to influence subjects. The researcher unobtrusively records information about the subjects as they go about their regular activities. However, some settings, such as a hospital emergency waiting room, require more detailed information about the social circumstances, medical conditions, and subjects’ backgrounds than detached observation might provide. The nonparticipant observer also is likely to have limited time before being noticed and queried by hospital staff.

EXCERPTS FROM THE RESEARCH ARTICLE

An Unobtrusive Study of Arousal-Attraction

1. The present study attempted to generalize previous findings [that emotional states are a function of physiological arousal and one’s perception of the precipitating event] beyond the laboratory by observing the impact of arousal on interpersonal attraction among people attending a movie…. It was hypothesized that couples leaving the high-arousal (suspense) movie (52 Pickup) would engage in significantly more affiliative behaviors than couples leaving the neutral movie (True Stories, a mock documentary on middle-class life in America that includes no violence or nudity). It was further predicted that couples watching the high-arousal movie would engage more in affiliative behaviors (i.e., talking, touching) when exiting the theater than when entering the theater but that couples watching the neutral movie would not exhibit increased affiliative behavior when exiting the theater.

2. Seventy-six mixed-sex dyads were unobtrusively observed entering, and 70 mixed-sex dyads were observed leaving the two movies. The dependent variable, level of affiliation, was measured by the number of couples who were either talking or touching, both talking and touching, and neither talking nor touching. In order to record patron behavior unobtrusively, three observers kept a mental count of the number of couples fitting each of the four categories. The totals were recorded as soon as all the patrons were seated or had left the theater.

Selected Findings

3. These results indicate that couples leaving the high-arousal movie were more affiliative than couples leaving the low-arousal movie. The results from the pre-arousal measure of affiliation reduce the possibility that behavior while leaving the movies was due to preexisting differences in affiliative tendencies between the two groups.

Source: Brett Cohen, Gordon Waugh and Karen Place. 1989. “At the Movies: An Unobtrusive Study of Arousal-Attraction.” The Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 129: 691–693. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036–1802. Copyright 1989.

Exercise for Topic 11

FACTUAL QUESTIONS

1. State the purpose of the study and how it extends prior research.
   
   
   
2. In what setting did the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part A Introduction to Social and Behavioral Science Research
• Part B Theory, Measurement, and Time in Research
• Part C Methods of Data Collection
• Part D Samples and Sampling
• Part E Data Analysis and Beyond