A technique in contemporary anthropological fieldwork (as well as in ethnology and sociology) in which the fieldworkers live with the group they have chosen to study, and to participate in their daily activities as much as possible. It involves not only participation in the life and work of a group or sub-culture, but also a slew of other approaches such as direct observation, analysis of documents possessed by individuals, group discussions, gathering information on the life histories of selected individuals, and cross-checking with other participant observers (the latter being one way of combatting subjective biases). One of the strengths of participant observation is the richness of information it can produce, information that can be distilled for subsequent quantitative analyses. Its weaknesses are acknowledged by its adherents, starting with a loss of objectivity and encompassing a lack of generalisability to other settings and groups at later times, as well as the possibility of being overwhelmed by the ‘tyranny of the (vast amounts of) data’. Contemporary use of the method is directed toward addressing some of its inherent problems and so to improve its robustness as a research tool. Participant observation appears to have started with former students of Franz Boas (1858-1942) in the States, and the social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) in Britain.
See Anthropology, Generalization, Qualitative research, Sociology