Systematic observation in psychology

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Review Questions, 1-8,. Please answer questions in detail and support your answers with scholarly research citations where appropriate. Support your paper with a minimum of 5 resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.

Length: 5-7 pages not including title and reference pages References: Minimum of 5 scholarly resources. Your paper should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts that are presented in the course and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your paper should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards.

Review Questions 1. What is naturalistic observation? How does a researcher collect data when conducting naturalistic observation research? 2. Why are the data in naturalistic observation research primarily qualitative? 3. Distinguish between participant and nonparticipant observation; between concealed and nonconcealed observation. 4. What is systematic observation? Why are the data from systematic observation primarily quantitative? 5. What is coding system? What are some important considerations when developing a coding system? 6. What is a case study? When are studies used? What is a psychobiography? 7. What is archival research? What are the major sources of archival data? 8. What is content analysis?

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Naturalistic observation is a commonly used research method used by psychologists and other scientists in social platform. Naturalistic observation is a technique that involves observation of subjects in natural environments. This technique is mostly used in areas where doing laboratory research is not necessary and cost is not required or would interfere with the information. Unlike structured observation, naturalistic observation technique entails observing a behavior as it happens in its natural sense without any interference from the researcher. This technique is advantageous in the sense that, it allows direct observation of a behavior by a researcher as it occurs. Also naturalistic observation method allows the study that cannot be done in laboratories due to ethical reasons. A good example is that one cannot study the impacts of imprisonment by confining the subjects. The only way is to gather information from the prison through naturalistic observation technique (Wertz, 2011).

There are several methods used when collecting data using a naturalistic observation technique. Observers use tallying counts by writing down when and how often some behaviors occur. Another technique utilized in data collection is by use of observer narratives method. This involves taking notes when observing then go back later and try to get data and differentiate behavioral patterns from the notes. Depending on the kind of behavior being studied, the observer may choose to record audio or video tapes during each session (Wertz, 2011).

The data in naturalistic observation is mainly qualitative because it is a description of real observations instead of statistical quantitative summaries. The main purpose of naturalistic observation is to give accurate description and interpretation. The researcher has a responsibility of describing the setting, events and individuals observed. At the end, Researcher analyzes observed behavior and gives detailed information of the data collected. Naturalistic observation is primarily qualitative because the researcher gets the data from the field where the subjects are affected directly by the topic under study. Researchers personally get the data from different sources such as; studying documents, observation of behavior and conducting interviews. On the other hand, researchers collect data forms through interviews and observation of behaviors of subjects, recording both audio and video tapes. All this leads to naturalistic observation technique. This technique is a non-experimental, mainly qualitative research technique in which items are researched in their environmental setting. Behaviors of interest are studied and recorded by the researcher. This method is mostly used during the starting stages of the research project. Therefore, naturalistic observation technique is a qualitative study method utilized in research data collection (Goodwin, 2010).

Participant observation takes on an active role;it includes direct participation in lives of individuals being researched, this technique lowers the individual’s role where he or she observes. Participant observation should be well understood in the field. A big issue affecting participant observation is that observers might lose the main objective to conduct the study. This is opposed to non-participant observation whereby the observer does not take an active role during the study. Participant observation does not only show site and writing content down, on the otherhand, it is a complicated method that involves various components. One of the things a researcher or a person conducting the study should do after choosing to perform a participant observation to collect data. He or she should choose what kind of observer should be selected.(Wertz, 2011).