ABSTRACT

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part explores how the participant observer can sharpen and refine his research hypotheses through the different stages of fieldwork, and finally in the research report itself, in which the underlying principle, analytic induction, gives the logical guidelines. It explains the ethical problems in publishing field reports complete the Reader. The part presents the problems of writing up participant observation where issues of maintaining anonymity for informants may become of paramount importance. It deals with the cornerstone of the logic of survey analysis, the control of extraneous variables, which may account for the simple two variable relationships on which much weight is so often placed. The part points out the common fallacy in referring to such relationships as spurious. It discusses some of the assumptions, of crucial importance to the researcher, on which the model depends.