Bronislaw Malinowski’s fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands is recognized as emblematic of this new form of data collection, given his attempt to describe in detail the everyday life of people, rather than reconstructing past culture or fitting them into a preexisting evolutionary framework. The development of participant-observation in anthropology is usually attributed to the late 19th and early 20th century change from “armchair” research to “fieldwork” and direct data collection by researchers. These emotions too are noted in the field diary as part of the data record. During ethnographic fieldwork, the participant-observer also will experience changing emotional states from initial excitement to culture shock and from contentment to despair and back again as the work proceeds. The amount of insider knowledge that can be gained through participant-observation varies from project to project depending on the extent of active complete participation that is possible. Although participant-observation moves a researcher from a position outside a culture to that of an insider, it does not eliminate all cultural barriers. It also allows the fieldworker gradually to become part of the cultural scene, thereby minimizing people’s attempts to modify behavior from their ordinary routine.
Since participant-observation enables ethnographers to understand interview, survey, and observational data, it enhances research validity. Participant-observation helps researchers refine skills in the native language, facilitating appropriate interviewing, which is the other primary ethnographic fieldwork method. Thus, the approach typically is not deductive in design or based on hypothesis testing models. Participant-observation is not appropriate for studies with large populations or when precise causal relationships between limited variables are sought. As a strategy, participant-observation is particularly useful if the research topics are usually hidden from outsiders such as family life or religious activities, if the interest is in behavior that is observable within daily life, if the group is limited by size and/or location as in a specific case study, and if emphasis is on understanding meaning from the emic or insiders’ point of view.
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