Participant Observation

Participant observation is of high importance in the fieldwork process of ethnographic studies (Fetterman, 2010:37). Mack et.al (2005:13) introduce participant observation as “a qualitative method with roots in traditional ethnographic research, whose objective is to help researchers learn the perspectives held by study populations”. Mack et al give a descriptive account of what we can learn from participant observation.

Data obtained through participant observation serve as a check against participants‟ subjective reporting of what they believe and do. Participant observation is also useful for gaining an understanding of the physical, social, cultural, and economic contexts which study participants live; the relationships among and between people, contexts, ideas, norms, and events; and people‟s behaviours and activities-what they do, how frequently, and with whom. (Mack et al., 2005:14)

By analysing the prevailing literature on both „ethnographic research‟ and „participant observation research‟ I found no significant difference between the observation processes in these two types of research. According to Fetterman (2010):

Participant observation is immersion in a culture. Ideally, the ethnographer lives and works in the community for six months to a year or more, learning the language and seeing patterns of behaviour over time. Long-term residence helps the researcher internalize the basic beliefs, fears, hopes, and expectations of the people under the study. (Fetterman, 2010:37)

Agreeing with Fetterman, I spent six months with the 2 CMHTs, 2-3 days a week with each team. The days to be spent with each team were generally decided depending on the scheduled home visits, interviews or team meetings; otherwise if there was no scheduled event I spent time in one of the CMHTs reading secondary data and generally observing each and every aspect of the team‟s work routine, as

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well as how they interact with each other. Observation also included individual and team behaviour, listening to formal as well as informal conversations and asking questions to gather data about team functioning and individual workers‟ contributions. Being located in the team premises gave me the opportunity to participate in team meetings and join in the home visits, as well as observing the daily functioning of the team. It also helped me to participate in different meetings and to join in the home visits, sometimes without any prior schedule or plan.

In understanding the social work professionals‟ contribution to a multi disciplinary team, it is important to collect evidence of other professionals‟ views of the changing nature of the MHSWs and AMHPs contribution to increasingly interdisciplinary teams and services, who interact with them on a daily basis. Participant observation enabled me to do this by providing the opportunity to closely observe the team members while working in their offices, participating in team meetings and in general discussions. Through this close observation I managed to understand how they share responsibility for day to day mental health interventions and practice and how a multi disciplinary approach is facilitated with service users.

Another important fact I discovered, through observation, is how it helps to understand some issues within teams that were very valuable to me as a researcher, but very general for the team members, which they feel not worth mentioning to me at all. For example; the day-to-day duty reporting, case allocation, procedures for home visits and recording them etc. Perhaps in the interviews or meetings they would not talk about these issues because they become so common in their daily work routine. For this reason these opportunities for observation are of immense value to the researcher, unfamiliar with the team setting.

According to De Walt & De Walt (2002) as cited by Fetterman (2010:38):

Participant observation sets the stage for more refined techniques-including projective techniques and questionnaires-and becomes more refined itself as the fieldworker understands more and more about the culture. Ideas and behaviours that were only a blur on entering the community take on a sharper focus. Participant observation can also help clarify the results of more refined instruments, by providing a baseline of meaning and a way to re-enter the field to explore the context for those (often unexpected results).

Participant observation needs close contact with the research participants in their own environment, to understand the truths hidden behind the scenes. But while

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becoming close to the participants, I also understood the need to keep the „professional distance‟ of the researcher. As Fetterman (2010:37) explains, “participant observation combines participation in the lives of the people under study with maintenance of a professional distance that allows adequate observation and recording of data”. Brewer (2000:59-60) also confirms this idea, stating “participant observers must attempt to „maintain the balance between „insider‟ and „outsider‟ status; to identify with the people under study and get close to them, but maintaining a professional distance which permits adequate observation and data collection”. For example, when joining home visits I shared car journeys with the staff members. This helped me to get much closer to them and discuss certain issues of my field work process, like planning another home visit or finding a service user for an interview; however I was always careful not to talk about the issues related to the other staff members, like cancellation of appointments, which I assumed may sometimes cause unnecessary problems within the team.

Brewer (2000:60) further explains about the advantage of this as “A proper balance in the participant observer‟s dual role as part insider and part outsider gives them the opportunity to be inside and outside the setting, to be simultaneously member and non-member, and to participate while also reflecting critically on what is observed and gathered while doing so”. Keeping this professional distance also helped me in being unbiased when it came to the interpretation of data.

Another benefit of participant observation is it helps the researchers to uncover important facts, related to research problems, that were unknown at the beginning of the study (Mack et al., 2005:14). When designing my research proposal, my general understanding was that in a multi disciplinary CMHT, all the different professionals would join in designing a care package for a given service user. I assumed that the advantage of having a multi disciplinary team is that a particular service user would benefit from the services of different professionals such as the CPNs, OTs and for social workers in a jointly designed care package. However, what I observed through participation in the team meetings and daily activities was very different. In the team meetings new services users were allocated to the staff members by the team leader and it was the individual staff member‟s responsibility to design the whole care package for that given service user. He or she may ask for assistance from other staff members, for example MHSWs, AMHPs and OTs need help from CPNs for

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depot injections etc, however it was not a joint care package as I had assumed. This observation enhanced my understanding of how the microsystem works and, in turn, provided the opportunity to redesign some of the questions in my interview guides. As Mack et al. (2005:14) further describes:

This is the great advantage of the method because, although we may get truthful answers to the research questions we ask, we may not always ask the right questions. Thus what we learn from participant observation can help us not only to understand data collected through other methods, but also to design questions for those methods that will give us the best understanding of the phenomenon being studied.

As discussed above, there are various strengths in participant observation. To summarise them, as Mack et al (2005:15) explains, the main strengths are, it „allows for insight into contexts, relationships and behaviour‟ and „can provide information previously unknown to researchers that is crucial for project design, data collection, and interpretation of other data‟. As an ethnographic researcher, I used all these benefits in designing, redesigning and developing my fieldwork.

Overcoming the weaknesses of participant observation

As well as the above strengths, participant observation has some weaknesses. Mack

et al (2005:15) explain one of these weaknesses as the „time consuming‟ nature of

the method. Though participant observation element was time consuming, in my experience in this research, it went hand in hand with other methods I used in the field. This made it seem less time intensive and much depends on the researcher‟s ability to plan and schedule events. With a limited time period for the fieldwork, I entered the field with a reasonable time plan. I did not just spend my time observing, but undertook the interviews, joined in the team meetings and home visits and collected secondary data concurrently with the observations.

Mack et al (2005:15) describe another difficulty with participant observation as „documentation relying on memory, personal discipline, and the diligence of the researcher‟. This is because it is hard to write down everything that is important while you are in the act of participating and observing. Even though you are an overt observer, it can be very distracting and problematic to take down notes in the field whenever you want; especially when you are in meetings, home visits or any other social gathering, as some people might be suspicious or think they are unimportant.

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This happened to me during the first months in the meetings, where I tried to take down notes while the meetings were in progress. Some of the issues that they discussed seemed useful to me in understanding how the system worked, yet were obviously very general issues to the staff members and seemed unimportant.

While listening or joining in informal discussions and other kind of interactions with the staff members and service users, I always encountered many phenomena that were important and relevant things to my study. In these situations I made detailed notes as soon as I got back to my seat or reached home, before they faded from my memory. These field notes helped me to refresh my memory and made it easy to transfer them to my fieldwork diary at the end of the day. This fieldwork diary contained all the things happened throughout the day and I managed this on a daily basis. I also had the benefit of using the data recorder in all the interviews and most of the team meetings, so that I did not have to write down everything during the interviews and meetings. Use of the data recorder also gave me the advantage of taking down more clear observation notes, while recording the speech.

Mack et al (2005:15) describe a further weakness in participant observation:

It is an‟ inherently subjective exercise, whereas research requires objectivity. It is therefore important to understand the difference between reporting or describing what you observe (more objective) versus interpreting what you see (less objective). Filtering out personal biases may take some practice. I found that this was true when starting to describe an event, as the event always goes together with our own experiences and biases. In this situation, I noted down whatever I experienced; however; when transferring the notes into my field work diary, I practised writing more objective notes, as this allowed me to think of the previous notes with a clear and relaxed mind at the end of the event. Finally, it is important to mention here that although participant observation has some weaknesses, in all aspects of it, participant observation proved to be a very powerful tool in this research.