Abstract
Participant observation elicits unique observation data from both an insider's and an outsider's perspectives. Despite the growing tendency to adopt participant observation strategies in health care research regarding health-related beliefs and types of behavior, the use of participant observation in current research is mostly limited to structured clinical settings rather than community settings. In this paper, we describe how we use participant observation in a community health research study with Chinese-born immigrant women. We document discrepancies between these women's beliefs and types of behavior regarding health and health promotion. We further discuss the ethnical, time, and setting challenges in community health research using participant observation. Possible solutions are also discussed.
Highlights
Derived from cultural anthropology, participant observation (PO) is a qualitative research methodology that is widely used by sociologists and anthropologists [1]
As we observed during PO, the majority of the informants were connected with the local Chinese community in one way or another
PO has irreplaceable advantages over other qualitative research methods to elicit unique contextually rich data that are not able to be fully elicited from self-reported strategies [2, 7]
Summary
Derived from cultural anthropology, participant observation (PO) is a qualitative research methodology that is widely used by sociologists and anthropologists [1]. The objective of PO is to offer researchers a method to investigate the perspectives of a group in a given community [2]. What makes the PO method distinctive is that PO emphasizes the role of the researcher as a participant in a community [2]. Researchers do not merely observe their study informants distantly and objectively but actively participate in the informants’ daily activities to understand the informants’ daily dynamics from both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspectives [2]. As an exploratory qualitative approach, PO is appropriate for any community health research [2, 3]
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