Observation

• Observation allows you to look at how people behave in different settings. You can do both reactive and non-reactive observation.

• Non-reactive observation looks at how people behave in a completely natural setting. In a good example of this, one researcher watched college students in a cafeteria to see which line they chose, one with a white cashier or one with an African-American cashier. Non-reactive observation is much like content analysis in that you look at occurrences of specific actions to later analyze them against possible reasons for those actions.

• Reactive observation allows the subjects to know that they are being studied, but still attempts to observe their actions in a quantitative fashion. An example of this would be if you brought couples into a room and listened to them talk about their relationship to see if women talk about some things more than men.

• Both types of observation use similar techniques as content analysis to determine validity and generalizibility. With non-reactive observation, a convince sample is usually used because of the fact that you cannot control who enters the space that you are watching. Sampling techniques for reactive observation can vary depending on what type of population you are attempting to study.