The Participant-Observer Technique in Small Communities

Abstract

The quest for general and specific roles, in the playing of which one can be regarded by the members of a community as a participant in their activities and interests, is the key to the use of the participant-observer technique. Though some disadvantages in participant observation are admitted, the paper sets forth a number of respects in which the range, relevance, and reliability of field data are usually increased. It is maintained that a use of the technique will provide a desirable balance between the more purely behavioristic type of investigation and the type which seeks some measure of insight into the "meanings" current in the community. The investigator, forced to analyze his own roles, is, on the one hand, less misled by the myth of complete objectivity in social research and, on the other, more consciously aware of his own biases.