Participation level:
- Low (Information only)
Innovation level:
- Low (Traditional)
Facilitator skill level, and other support required:
- High (Specialist skills)
Can be used for:
- Showcase product, plan, policy
- Engage community
- Discover community issues
- Develop community capacity
- Develop action plan
- Communicate an issue
- Medium (2-12 people)
- Individual
A participant observer is placed in a community with the aim of collecting more detailed information about a community's habits, opinions and issues and with a view to developing planning and policies that better incorporate the community's needs and wishes.
Information about a community collected by a participant observer can ensure that planning and decision-making incorporates community needs and opinions, and will therefore be more acceptable and more useful to the community.
- Can develop greater understanding of sensitive situations.
- Can be used before developing a consultation program in cases where the nature of community issues is not known to agencies.
- Can be used for scoping information and determining key players when the issue is contentious or controversial
- Can assist in the development of a more thoughtful consultation program because participant observation is usually conducted incognito. Can allow the development of consultation processes that suit the subject community.
- This method is limited, and needs to be used in conjunction with other methods for collecting information, for example, surveys, public meetings, and/or displays and exhibits.
- Depends on the ability of the researcher/consultant to correctly observe and draw appropriate conclusions.
- Can create concern in the community.
- Not recommended for use in isolation but in conjunction with other tools and techniques, to offset any bias or inaccuracy in the observer's conclusions.
- Applicable to a wide variety of issues.
- Particularly useful as a technique where the issue is contentious or controversial.
- Takes a long time.
Organizing Participant Observation
How many people to organize?
Time required:
- Long (> 6 months)
- Medium (6 weeks-6 months)
Cost:
- High (> AUD$10,000)
- Researcher lives in or regularly visits the site/suburb/organisation.
- Observations are made by the researcher regarding opinions or reactions to particular issues.
- Researchers should state their intentions openly, and integrate themselves into the community.
- The conclusions drawn by the researcher depend largely on the researcher's abilities, and should be seen within this context.
- Generally, participant observation should be combined with actual participation techniques to be of any value.