Role-Making in Participant Observation: Processes in the Researcher-Actor Relationship

Abstract

Although recent essays about participant observations have extended our understanding of that research method and its problematic aspects, few methodologists have scrutinized intensively the processes by which roles are developed in this type of fieldwork or the relationship of role development to the data gathered. Our purpose in reviewing our own experiences as participant observers in a longitudinal study of baccalaureate student nurses is to explore these questions. We have also studied reports of the encounters of other researchers in participant observation. Using information from such experiences, we have tried to outline and interpret the characteristic processes of role defining in this type of research. We have restricted ourselves to consideration of fieldwork situations in which the involved parties are mutually aware of the research, thus avoiding the special problems of role definitions in hidden research.