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Participant Observation and Interviewing: A Comparison
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Participant ObservationSocial InfluencePsychologyField ObservationSocial SciencesComputational Social ScienceDirect ObservationSociological DatumConversation AnalysisLanguage StudiesContent AnalysisComputational SociologySocial EventInformation EscapeApplied Social PsychologyCultureSocial BehaviorSociologyQuantitative Social Science ResearchSurvey Methodology
The most complete form of the sociological datum, after all, is the form in which the participant observer gathers it: An observation of some social event, the events which precede and follow it, and explanations of its meaning by participants and spectators, before, during, and after its occurrence. Such a datum gives us more information about the event under study than data gathered by any other sociological method. Participant observation can thus provide us with a yardstick against which to measure the completeness of data gathered in other ways, a model which can serve to let us know what orders of information escape us when we use other methods.