Conduct observational studies.
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Observational studies, such as profiling a place (see Chapter 3) for a writing course or studying how children play for a psychology or sociology course, are common in college. To conduct an observational study effectively, follow these guidelines:
Planning an Observational Study
To ensure that your observational visits are productive, plan them carefully:
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Arrange access if necessary. Visits to a private location (such as a day-care center or school) require special permission, so be sure to arrange your visit in advance. When making your request, state your intentions and goals for your study directly and fully. You may be surprised at how receptive people can be to a college student on assignment. But have a fallback plan in case your request is refused or the business or institution places constraints on you that hamper your research.
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Develop a hypothesis. In advance, write down a tentative assumption about what you expect to learn from your study—your hypothesis. This will guide your observations and notes, and you can adjust your expectations in response to what you observe if necessary. Consider, too, how your presence will affect those whom you are observing, so you can minimize your impact or take the effect of your presence into consideration.
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Consider how best to conduct the observation. Decide where to place yourself to make your observations most effective. Should you move around to observe from multiple vantage points, or will a single perspective be more productive?
Strategies for conducting your observation include the following:
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For more about narration, description, and classification, see Chapters, 14, 15, and 17.
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Narration: Narrate the activities going on around you. Try initially to be an innocent observer: Pretend that you have never seen anything like this activity or place before, and explain what you are seeing step by step, even if what you are writing seems obvious. Include interactions among people, and capture snippets of conversations (in quotation marks) if possible.
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Analysis and classification: Break the scene down into its component parts, identify common threads, and organize the details into categories.
Take careful notes during your visit if you can do so unobtrusively, or immediately afterwards if you can’t. You can use a notebook and pencil, a laptop or tablet, or even a smartphone to record your notes. Choose whatever is least disruptive to those around you. You may need to use abbreviations and symbols to capture your observations on-site, but be sure to convert such shorthand into words and phrases as soon as possible after the visit so that you don’t forget its significance.
Writing Your Observational Study
For more about mapping, clustering, or outlining strategies, see Chapter 11.
Immediately after your visit, fill in any gaps in your notes, and review your notes to look for meaningful patterns. You might find mapping strategies, such as clustering or outlining, useful for discovering patterns in your notes. Take some time to reflect on what you saw. Asking yourself questions like these might help:
- How did what I observed fit my own or my readers’ likely preconceptions of the place or activity? Did my observations upset any of my preconceptions? What, if anything, seemed contradictory or out of place?
- What interested me most about the activity or place? What are my readers likely to find interesting about it?
- What did I learn?
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Your purpose in writing about your visit is to share your insights into the meaning and significance of your observations. Assume that your readers have never been to the place, and provide enough detail for it to come alive for them. Decide on the perspective you want to convey, and choose the details necessary to convey your insights.
PRACTICING THE GENRE
Collaborating on an Observational Study
Arrange to meet with a small group (three or four students) for an observational visit somewhere on campus, such as the student center, gym, or cafeteria. Have each group member focus on a specific task, such as recording what people are wearing, doing, or saying, or capturing what the place looks, sounds, and smells like. After twenty to thirty minutes, report to one another on your observations. Discuss any difficulties that arise.