164 ACCESSING AND GENERATING DATA
PARTICIPANT-OBSERVATION: WE ALL DO IT, BUT SOME OF US
TAKE NOTES AND LOOK FOR PATTERNSSomeone is standing at a crosswalk preparing to walk. She observes the scene around her: How
far is it to the other side of the street? How many cars are coming from different directions? How
far away are they and are they going fast or slow? We become adept interpreters through sufficient
and extensive practice. Putting all this information together, the street-crosser decides: Can I
safely make it to the other side? If there’s a puddle between here and there, is there sufficient time
for me to get to the other side before a car splashes me? Are there so many people crossing from
the side I’m heading toward that they’ll slow me down too much for me to make it across before
the cars start again or I get splashed?
We tend to be categorizers and develop an implicit understanding of how important context, or
situational behavior, is for accurate category making and interpretation. These are such mundane
acts that we might not be explicitly aware of the multitude of thought processes that go into
getting around every day. Some people might find it difficult to articulate the steps they go through
in navigating daily life, and most would not conceive of the decisions entailed in daily activities
in research terms, that is, as generating basic empirical data. Take, for instance, the traffic on that
street. A transportation planner might observe how many people and cars go by at different times
of the day to decide whether it is necessary to add a new crosswalk. An environmental psycholo-
gist might be watching how people negotiate passage with one another and look for significant
patterns based on preselected and emerging variables. Even a parent of a child at the nearby
elementary school might be seen as engaging in rudimentary research in ascertaining how safe
this crossing is for children and whether a school guard is necessary. There are many more imag-
inable questions in this scenario, such as whether locals who know this crossing well and new-
comers who do not use the same crossing strategy. And within that question, what about visitors
from urban New York City, rural Mexico, or suburbs in Massachusetts—would they show differ-
ences in their traffic-negotiating strategies and styles? What are considered empirical research
data to some are simply the trivia of everyday life to others.
For many in academia, observing is part of teaching. Imagine you’re teaching a statistics class
for social science students using the U.S. census as your database. You let a student set the re-
search question and he comes up with a question you’ve not explored yourself: Is there a statisti-
cally significant relationship among the number of rooms in a unit, the number and relation of its
residents, and their income? You watch how each team of students approaches the problem.
You’re observing. Using the knowledge you’ve accumulated during your years of teaching and
researching, you “intuitively” reach conclusions about the right way to do the problem, why each
team is approaching it in a particular way, why certain choices are selected and others rejected.
You can’t be sure, however, that your interpretation of a team’s rationale is accurate just by
observing. So you sit down with one team at a time to listen to their discussions and work with
them. Maybe someone says, “In order for this to be meaningful, you have to add geographic
location to the equation” or “What about national origin?” Two students debate the relative merits
of several statistical methods. Quite possibly, you’ll discover that the underlying rationale on
which some of the students are depending is one you hadn’t considered because it is not part of
your life experiences or way of thinking. Now you’re participating as well as observing. You are
also beginning the process of interpreting.
Taking this analogy a step further, by listening to their discussions, you could learn a lot about
the students, their backgrounds, and, perhaps most significantly, how these traits influence what
they think is important and worthy of study. You can understand what assumptions implicitly