Month: January 2021

Observational protocol and qualitative documentations

As a researcher, you could be a non-participant to a full-on participant when observing your subjects in a study.  Thus, the observed/empathized behavioral and activities of individuals in the study are jotted down in field notes (Creswell, 2013).  Most researchers use an observational protocol to jotting down these notes as they observe their subjects.  According to Creswell (2013), this protocol could consist of: “separate descriptive notes (portraits of the participants, a reconstruction of dialogue, a description of the physical setting, accounts of particular events, or activities) [to] reflective notes (the researcher’s personal thoughts, such as “speculation, feelings, problems, ideas, hunches, impressions, and prejudices), … this form might [have] demographic information about the time, place, and date of the field setting where the observation takes place.”

Whereas, observational work can be combined with in-depth interviewing, and sometimes the observational work (which can be an everyday activity) can help prepare the researcher for the interviews (Rubin, 2012).  Doing so can increase the quality of the interviews because the interviewers know what the researcher has seen or read and can provide more information on those materials.  This can also allow the researcher to master the terminology before entering the interview. Finally, Rubin (2012) also states that cultural norms become more visible through observation rather than just a pure in-depth interview.

In Creswell (2013), Qualitative Documents are information contained within documents that could help a researcher out in their study that could be either public (newspapers, meeting minutes, official reports) and/or private (personal journals/diaries, letters, emails, internal manuals, written procedures, etc.) documents.  This can also include pictures, videos, educational materials, books, files. Whereas, Artifact Analysis is the analysis of the written text, usually are charts, flow sheets, intake forms, reports, etc.

The main analysis approach of this document would be to read the document to gain a subject matter understanding.  Document analysis would aid in quickly grouping, sorting and resort the data obtained for a study.  This manual will not be included in the coded dataset, but will help provide appropriate codes/categories for the interview analysis, in other words give me suggestions about what might be related to what.   Finally, one way to interpret this document would be for triangulation of data (data from multiple sources that are highly correlated) between the observation, interviews and this document.   

References

Organizational research & Participant Observer

For organizational research, some of their major goals for research are to examine their formation, recruitment of talent, adaption to constraints, types and causes, factors for growth, change and demise, which all fall under ethnographic studies (Lofland, 2005).  Ethnographic studies lend themselves much more nicely to participant-observers.

Participant observer is where the researcher/observer is not just only watching their subjects, but also actively participates (joins in) with their subject. The level of participation of the observer might impact what is observed (the more participation the harder it is to observe and take notes), thus low-key role participation is preferred.  Participating before the interviews will allow the observer to be sensitive to important issues otherwise missed. It is a more in-depth version of interviewing building on a regular conversation.  Participation may occur after watching for a while, focusing on a specific topic/question. (Rubin, 2012)

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