This chapter describes five procedures and instruments useful for collecting data in research projects. The five are observations, content analyses, interviews, questionnaires, and tests. Each is portrayed in terms of its definition, types, advantages, limitations, and sources of additional information.

OBSERVATIONS

Gathering information by observing involves watching and/or listening to people and events, then recording what has been discovered.

Ways of Observing

As noted in the discussion of case studies, an important feature of observation procedures is the relationship that different procedures represent between the observer and the observed. This observer/observed association can range from the very remote to the very intimate. The following five examples of observation types progress from the most removed association to the most immediate.

Inconspicuous television cameras at four locations in a conference room were used for videotaping the activities of 12 members of a political candidate's support group as they planned campaign strategies. The researcher later scrutinized the tapes (a) to discover dominant and submissive roles displayed by the participants in their interactions and (b) to estimate the characteristics of individuals that determined the roles they adopted.

A PhD candidate in sociology used a videotape camera to photograph confrontations between labor-union strikers and nonunion workers who were crossing picket lines in an effort to enter an automobile assembly plant that was being blockaded. The videotapes were later analyzed by three graduate students--each working alone--to identify (a) tactics used by strikers to dissuade workers from entering the plant and (b) types of responses of nonunion workers. Following the viewing sessions, the students compared their records to determine how closely their analyses agreed.

A graduate student seated at the rear of a third-grade classroom on three successive days observed the types of pupil responses that were elicited by the different style the teacher used in leading class discussion each of those days. On each occasion, the observer recorded the particular day's leadership style in the form of code letters symbolizing the relationship between the teacher's mode of questioning and the quality and amount of pupils' responses.

For his thesis entitled Group-Think Patterns, a student received permission to witness how a recruiting committee in each of four college groups (two fraternities, two sororities) planned to attract new members to their organization. The aim of the research was to chart the patterns of interaction among participants that produced group decisions. To help ensure the accuracy of his data, the student used an audiotape recorder to capture the conversation of committee members.

To gather data about the personality traits and life experiences of people who seek help in becoming more outspoken in their social relationships, a master's degree candidate joined an eight-member assertiveness-training group led by a counseling psychologist. Immediately following each of the group's weekly sessions, the student retired to an adjacent room to fill out a personality-profile rating scale for each participant. She also wrote brief descriptions of what the participants had said and done during the session that determined the ratings she assigned them.

Three noteworthy features of the five cases are (a) the consequences of remote versus intimate methods of observing, (b) ways of recording observations, and (c) the protection of subjects' welfare.

Remote versus intimate

The more remote the connection between observers and the people they observe (cases 1 and 2), the less likely the observers will influence the incidents they witness. Remoteness increases the probability that participants in the incident will act in their typical manner. Thus, the observed events will be an accurate sample of the participants' usual behavior. However, in being remote, an observer is apt to miss subtle aspects of events or to misinterpret what occurs. This is where intimacy makes its chief contribution. The closer the observer's relationship with the observed (cases 4 and 5), the more likely the observer will see, hear, and feel the inconspicuous but significant features of an event and will have the background knowledge required for deriving an insightful interpretation of what those features mean. But too much intimacy--too close an emotional identification of the observer with the observed--can damage the objectivity of the investigation.

Recording techniques

Subjects' welfare

Recent decades have witnessed increasing sensitivity to the safety and rights of the people or animals that are observed, tested, or subjected to experiments. As a result, in order to foster humane and nonexploitative treatment of participants in research, higher-education institutions today maintain committees (humansubjects committees, experimental-subjects review boards) responsible for approving and monitoring the research plans of students and faculty members. The general rule governing the decisions of such committees is that any stress, inconvenience, or harm that might be suffered by the subjects of research must be far outweighed by the value of the research results--value in terms of the contribution the research makes to the world's knowledge and to the welfare of humans, animals, and the environment. Thus, students who are planning research for their graduate degree are advised, when designing their projects, to obtain a copy of their college's specific human-subjects standards so that their datagathering methods will comply with the standards. For example, in Case 1 above, it is likely that a human-subjects committee would require the student (who intends to videotape the political candidate's support group) to inform the group members ahead of time that their activities are going to be recorded.

Observation Resources

Suggestions for conducting observations can be found in