Research Methods in Social Relations-Field Work and Participant Observation: Studying Particular People and Places

Abstract

Experimenters frequently use college students as their subjects even. though they are not trying to study the mental or social life of college students. Instead, they wish to make observations about psychological pro-cesses that occur in all or most people. They wish to generalize beyond the college laboratory and say something about "people in general." Participant observers who study college students do so very deliberately to learn about their experiences. They may observe the behaviors. and attitudes of medical students, for instance, to draw conclusions about becoming a doctor (e.g.. Becker et al, 1961) Participant observers, like anthropologists, record in detail how people live, feel, and work in particular locales. Rather than go to foreign shores, however, they study places closer to home a neighborhood street gang, a parole office, an assembly line. or an Appalachian community. Like anthropologists, they provide rich detail on the lives of particular people in a particular place.