Use Naturalistic Observation as a Complement to Other Methods PDF

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REPORT FROM THE INTERNET REFLECTION AND ANALYSIS...

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Use Naturalistic Observation as a Complement to Other Methods Naturalistic observation is best used as a complement to other activities such as contextual inquiries and interviews. But, since you can’t see up-close details or ask questions, you probably wouldn’t want to use naturalistic observation as your only research method. Instead, you might first conduct a day or two of contextual inquiries with several participants, then spend the next day or two simply observing the group. The contextual inquiries would give you a good understanding of the participants, their tasks, and the problems and issues to watch for during the naturalistic observation. At the end of the last day, you could conduct additional interviews to get answers to your questions and confirm your understanding of what you’ve observed. By combining these methods, you get the advantages of both methods, while minimizing their disadvantages.

Planning an Observation Decide what you want to learn from the research. As I mentioned earlier, observation involves more than simply going somewhere and passively looking and listening. So planning is necessary to get the best results....