Essays

Participant Observation Essay Example

Today, ethical considerations in anthropological research are linked to participants, society, government, as well as other stakeholders. To the participants, these may include informed consent, confidentiality, compensation, risk, and level of vulnerability. The goal of the participant is to increase understanding with particular groups, beliefs, and values. There is a need to negotiate on the places that necessitate visitation and collect the required pieces of information. The concept of ethics in the field has a significant target of minimizing conflict when collecting data therefore the observation technique is useful to researchers in many ways as it provides a variety of information that can be used in making reports as it offers researchers different ways on how to check nonverbal expressions, decide who relates to whom, gain knowledge on how participants connect.

There is a need to look at the concept of behavioral changes among people. Some of these concepts can be witnessed in the presentation of a questionnaire when seeking answers regarding the issues of behavioral change and beliefs. The behavioral differences and beliefs are based on an individual’s background and their ways of interpreting behaviorial changes therefore it can become hazardous when participants react harshly to the adopted research approach. During the data collection process around some homesteads, it was easily realized that behavioral changes could be based on an individual’s mood or place of living. Some people believe that groups living in high-income areas are more equipped and well-informed when compared to those that reside in “slums”. As a result, it was a complicated process inconvincing such people to participate in the research.

A change in beliefs is also associated with the person’s upbringing as it creates a model of how to approach another person therefore it was a challenging practice to communicate with people that have grown up in harsh family environments as the majority had a conservative mindset on certain questions. Accordingly, while in one of the visited homesteads, there was a need to revise the research questions in the hope of creating a more persuasive tone when communicating. Such questions were related to how they have spent their lives in this region and this revision found that there were a lot of hardships from participants’ parents and the concept of being conservative is associated with the difficulty to share some of the strategies that were applied to attain these riches. The job opportunities attained by the people living in these regions are one of the main factors that led to the attainment of the riches. Some of the riches are the type of houses, cars that they drive, and staus of their neighbors in this area. Looking into the aspect of strategies for attaining these riches, they do not want to pointout the regions that an individual can visit to secure similar job opportunities that will easily make them wealthy.

Some of the new questions that may emerge include:

  • How can questions be best framed to attain the required information?
  • How can mood be best managed when encountering cruel interviewees?

Some of the lessons learned include; being selfish with certain piece sof information affects development in an area. Secondly, an individual will always respond based on an approach that has been applied towards them.

In conclusion, the observation practice in the research process demonstrated that behavior and belief changes among people are linked to a number of factors, such as upbringing and environment. It further affects the amount of content that can be collected while in the field. However, there is a need to apply a number of techniques that will persuade participants to divulge the required pieces of information.
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