Advantages and Disadvanatages of Participant Observation

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Advantages and disadvantages of participant observation
Participant observation involves the process of data collection and study that consists of the researcher joining the group of research and collecting data through looking at and in some cases participating in the daily lives and activities of the study group. The important advantage of the approach involves providing ethnographers with a valuable tool to study culture and improve the understanding of cultural differences. For example, Geertz (333) indicates that it fits the study of religion from which the discipline of ethnography arose. Secondly, participant observation improves validity by providing qualitative data and accounts of culture and the way people live in society. It gives the ethnographers’ with the tool to inscribe passing events and create an account through transcription that can be reconstructed (Geertz 345).
On the other hand, the approach also faces disadvantages, the primary one being the connection to bias by the researcher. Living and participating in the culture of other people provides the risk of getting too much involved and sympathy to create biased data. For instance, Rosaldo (7) indicates that the ethnographers reposition their accounts as they proceed to understand the culture. Additionally, participant observation approach is time consuming based on cultural differences of the researcher and the groups they study. For example, Rosaldo (3) indicates that it took 14 years after the first recording about grief and headhunters rage and additional exploration based on exchange theory to understand the overwhelming force of the statements.

Despite the disadvantages, the application of participant observation is significant in social science as it provides valid qualitative data based on the in time observation of activities and provides accounts that can be reconstructed for future understanding.

Works cited
Geertz, Clifford. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture.” The Cultural Geography Reader. Routledge, 2008. 21-51.
Rosaldo, Renato. Culture & truth: the remaking of social analysis: with a new introduction. Beacon Press, 1993.