Essays On Participant Observation

I have to stay in many assignments I've done I never thought I had to study a group of people with a drinking problem, it was quite sad to listen to a young girls story.

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This paper is an attempt to explore the possible research stances available to me involved in participant observation of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) of the Lehigh County.

For this field study I chose to be a complete observer.

The newcomer, (whose name I decided to withhold) without the usual self-introduction, asked about religion and...

The observation was conducted in the public place, the park.

The following study takes place at a meeting hall at Lehigh University's PAL's club on Tuesday, October 21st, 2003 at PM. I must say this was one of the most difficult experiences I've had.

At the start of the meeting there were only a few regular male members Stan and Ted present, and the female newcomer.Their conversation was very emotional since I could clearly here exclamations, laughter and I observed vivid mimic and gestures. At first the man and the woman hugged and walked throughout the park with the man’s hand around the woman’s waist. After that I observed a group of two men and a woman. They kept distance between each other, while talking and walking down the park. Finally, at the end of the observation, I noticed an elderly man sitting on the bench in the park and reading a newspaper.The man was rather unemotional and seemed to be totally engaged in reading.The observation was conducted from 11.00 am to 1 pm.Within two hours seventeen subjects were observed, among which ten were men and seven were women.The observation involved the communication and interaction between men and women, between men solely, and between women solely.In such a way, the observation was supposed to reveal gender differences in the behaviour of participants of the study.At first, I observed a group of five men communicating and interacting with each other. Four men were trying to play in two teams, while the fifth performed the function of a referee. Then, I observed another couple, where the man was mainly talking and leading the woman somewhere helping her to climb over the small hill and leading her holding her arm, while the woman followed him hastily.The couple seemed to be in a hurry and disappeared soon. They were sitting on the grass and chattering all the time.The time of the observation was three hours from 11.00 am to 2.00 pm.The observation focused on men and women to uncover specificities of their gender relations as well as individual behaviour of participants of the study. They walking through the park hand in hand and talking all the time, looking at each other and once they kissed as they parted.