ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on seven distinctive characteristics of participant observation especially as viewed from the perspective of methodological humanism and postmodernism. Participant observation is composed by certain distinctive characteristics. Participant observation offers no distinctive advantage for utilizing quantitative instruments; that is, the use of a questionnaire or some other instrument for collecting quantitative data usually can be completed without any participant observation. From the standpoint of methodological positivism, participant observation usually is seen as useful for exploratory descriptions of phenomena and suggestive of possible hypotheses for subsequent quantitative testing. Participant observation often collects information by way of a variety of strategies, methods, and techniques, but direct observation is primary. Reflexivity requires the participant observer to constantly and persistently consider the many connections between the researcher’s biography, thoughts, feelings, and activities, and their consequences for the conduct of research and its products.
