Observational Designs

Observational Designs

SOC 242 Methods of Social Research Prof. Younts F 2014 Homework Exercise #5: Observational Designs  Bring one photocopy of your typed fieldnotes (part 1) and TWO copies of your final typed lab report (part 2) to hand in at the beginning of the lab.

This lab is designed to provide you with a small amount of hands-on experience with qualitative field research using observational techniques, and specifically using qualitative observations to develop grounded theory. In part one, you will engage in field observations. In part two, you will attempt to develop a grounded theory to categorize, interpret and explain the observations you make in part one. Part 1: Fieldwork 1) Choose a setting (including the time, place, and units you will observe) in which you will take field notes for at least ½ hour. The setting must be a PUBLIC place, should contain lots of lively social interaction, and should be relatively unfamiliar to you so that you can experience it as an “outsider.” Coffee shops, restaurants, libraries, sporting events, bars, shopping malls etc. are appropriate settings. Do NOT choose a setting where people might reasonably expect privacy or where you would need to ask permission (e.g., a police station, emergency room, etc.). Use good judgment! You should also be willing and able to explain what you are doing (and why) to anyone in the setting who asks. 2) Take field notes: a. When you arrive at the setting, begin your fieldnotes by describing it in a very general way (time, location, physical characteristics, number of people, loudness, etc.). Because you will not know what aspects of the setting you will focus on, write about anything and everything you can observe for about 5-10 minutes. b. Begin to focus on the social aspects of interaction recording what you observe in as much detail as you can. i. After about 5-10 minutes, you should begin to narrow your focus to specific patterns of behavior that you observe (e.g., who is talking to whom, what about, how long). You can focus on a particular group or type of people, a particular area of the setting, a particular aspect of behavior, or anything else that is of interest to your sociological imagination. ii. As you narrow your focus, take notes more selectively, omitting parts of interaction that do not seem to be related to your developing focus. Finding a specific focus of observation is a key goal of this exercise. c. As you take notes on what you observe, be reflexive – note any instances in which you feel that your presence as an observer affects what you observe, your feelings about being in an unfamiliar setting, how the setting affects you and where you choose to focus, things that you feel help you to understand it better, and things that you find surprising. 3) General hints about taking fieldnotes: a. Attempt to “bracket” your preconceptions and biases so that you can minimize their affect on the observations you make and the notes you record. You should not interpret the observations until after you have collected all of your data. b. Use whatever personal shorthand that will allow you to get as much information as possible; do not use complete sentences in your notes, rather write as quickly, descriptively and thoroughly as possible. Make sure you can understand your notes after you leave the setting; this often means going over them immediately after leaving the setting to complete ideas that you didn’t have time to finish SOC 242 Methods of Social Research Prof. Younts F 2014 writing down. I expect you to clarify and correct your notes after you leave the setting and recommend typing them up immediately. c. Use adjectives and adverbs that are vivid and precise – your observations can involve any and all of your senses. This will allow you to more accurately recall your observations when you analyze them. d. Finally, make sure that you do not record any names or identifying information about people or the setting – you want to protect the confidentiality of your subjects. Part 2: Lab Report – Analysis (see Guide to Developing Grounded Theory) 4) Analyze your field experience by answering the following questions: a. Identify and describe the setting and why you chose this setting to perform your observations. Describe the social aspects of the setting as vividly as you can (number of people, what kinds of people are there, what they are doing there, etc.) so that the reader can imagine the setting. b. Analyze the observational focus: What pattern(s) did you discover during the course of your observations? Why did these patterns stand out to you? What did you discover after you began to focus more narrowly on these patterns? c. Develop a grounded theory explaining your observations: i. Identify and define at least two sociological concepts that help to explain your observations. These concepts are really variables whose values are the “categories” you identify and define during your analysis (see Guide). Make sure you define these concepts abstractly, but also provide specific concrete examples from your fieldnotes that exemplify the meaning of those concepts in the setting you observed. ii. State a provisional explanation for why you think these variables are related – what is the cause-effect relationship? At this point, you will want to identify which is the independent (cause) and which is the dependent (effect) variable. Make sure you state your explanation in general and abstract terms (i.e., NOT in terms of what you actually observed, but rather in terms of the concepts you developed from your observations) so that you or someone else could then make observations in other settings to see if they fit with your grounded theory. d. What was your effect on the setting? i. Describe how people in the setting reacted to and treated you while you were observing. Summarize these reactions by guessing what role the research subjects assigned to you (i.e., what do you suppose they believed you were doing?). ii. Did your presence affect the behavior you observed? Give examples from your fieldnotes. e. What were the effects of the setting on you? i. Describe how being an outsider to the setting affected your observations of the setting and your interpretation of those observations. Be reflexive here! Use statements from your fieldnotes to describe how you felt and whether/how your feelings changed during the course of your observations.

  1. SOC 242 Methods of Social Research Prof.(Younts) F 2014 1 Guide for Constructing Grounded Theory This handout is based on the classic book: Glaser, Barney G & Strauss, Anselm L., 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company. Purpose of Grounded Theory: A method for generating new theories inductively from empirical data. This method is not used to test (i.e., assess the soundness of) deductive theories. Therefore, it is not concerned with the internal or external validity of any causal conclusions. Grounded theory has the advantage of reducing the opportunitistic use of available theories or the force fit of popular theories to the data. It avoids “exampling”, the easy task of finding examples to fit any theory. General description of the method: Building grounded theory requires an iterative process of data collection, coding, analysis, and planning what to study next. The researcher needs to be theoretically sensitive as s/he collects and codes data to sense where the data is taking her/him and what to do next. Coming into a research setting with a pre-existing theoretical framework will merely blind the researcher to the richness of the incoming data. As this iterative process continues, the researcher may explore the same group more deeply or in different ways, or may seek out new groups. The data: Qualitative observations of social behavior with a focus on the emergent patterns of social interaction within and between different groups or subgroups of people. The analytic strategy: (1) Coding and analysis of data: a. Organize the data into categories: i. Begin by coding the data into as many categories as possible. These categories represent the values of variables. For instance male/female are categories of the variable gender, holds door open/does not hold door open are categories of the variable “polite” behavior, talks quietly/talks loudly are categories of the variable “dominating” behavior. ii. Let the categories emerge from your observations; do NOT impose pre-set categories on your observations. iii. Compare each new case/observation with the examples within the existing categories: 1. invent new categories when an observation does not fit any existing categories; remember, however, the ultimate goal is parsimony (i.e., as few categories/concepts as possible)! 2. As you find more instances of the same category, refine the theoretical properties of each category, making them more general. What does each category have in common with other categories of that variable/concept? How are they different from other categories or concepts? b. Theoretical sampling: As you develop more comprehensive categories, you will need to be more selective in your focus. Select observations based on their theoretical relevance to further the development of emerging categories, ignoring those that are irrelevant to your particular focus. i. Similar observations may help you gain sensitivity to differences between categories and to establish definite conditions for when a category exists. ii. Different observations may help magnify the strategic similarities and broaden the scope of the emergent theory. (2) Integrate the categories and their properties: a. During the research the emergent categories will begin to form patterns and interrelations that will ultimately form the core of the emerging theory. Essentially, you will notice that a SOC 242 Methods of Social Research Prof.(Younts) F 2014 2 particular category of one concept/variable tends to occur when a certain category of another concept/variable occurs, and it tends to be absent when the second is also absent. i. For instance, assume that we have categorized our data into two concepts (categories listed in parentheses) – gender of people entering a doorway (male, female) and polite behavior (holds door open/does not hold door open). While creating these categories, you noticed that males seem to hold the door open more often than females. But is this a meaningful and reliable observation? ii. Now, go back through your observations and ask yourself “Are there any cases of males who do not hold the door open? What is common among those cases where males do not hold the door and how are they different from cases where males do hold the door? Are there any cases of females who do hold the door open? What is common among those cases where females do hold the door and how are they different from cases where females do not hold the door?” iii. Based on your analysis, assume that you find that whether males hold a door open seems to depend on whether a male or a female follows them, whereas females appear to be equally likely to hold the door for both male and female followers. You now must add another concept (i.e., the gender of the person following, male or female) or refine your original concept (i.e., instead of the gender of the person opening the door, focus on the gender composition of pairs who enter a doorway within 5 seconds of each other, male-male, male-female, female-male, femalefemale). b. With your new/refined categories and a refined sense of the patterns you have observed, you now should start to think of WHY these patterns exist (e.g., whereas females are either socialized to be polite or are not, males are socialized to be chivalrous toward women and not toward men). i. You will need to “test” this explanation against your observations, further refining the concepts and explanation. Are there exceptions to this pattern and your proposed explanation? Can you explain the exceptions without adding new categories/concepts and without altering your original explanation? (3) Delimit the theory by making fewer changes in categories and “reducing” (i.e., abstracting) the concepts as the categories become theoretically saturated (i.e., the point at which no additional observations add to existing conceptual categories). a. Eventually the theory solidifies, and there are fewer changes to the theory as the researcher compares more observations. b. Take out irrelevant categories and concepts. c. Find ways to generalize the theory and reduce the number of categories. (4) Write the theory, using particular examples to validate suggested relationships. a. “When the researcher is convinced that his analytic framework forms a systematic substantive theory, that is it a reasonably accurate statement of the matters studied, and that it is couched in a form that others going into the same field could use — then he can publish his results with confidence” (p. 113). b. Grounded theory is most often presented in a “running theoretical discussion,” using conceptual categories and their properties, discussed in more lay terms, and illustrating the path of conceptual and theoretical development.