Participant Observation

I just read a really great article by Spradley all about participant observation. I feel like this will be important to my research, and to my immersion into Italian culture this summer. So, how better to get ready for my field study than to start with some participant observation now!?

The first thing one must take into account, and find, in order to do participant observation is a: Social Situation which is made up of 3 parts: a place, actors, and activities (described below). I chose to conduct my Participant Observation at the BYU vs. Stanford Men's Volleyball Game

Place	Actors	Activities
A single specific location OR a single, identifiable kind of place	The individuals present in the location that you will observe	Individual acts that will eventually become recognizable patterns of activity
The Smith Field House	BYU Fans   1. BYU students >>>student section >>>court-side seats   2. Alumni and other adult  BYU Men's Volleyball Team --starters, nonstarters, red-shirts, coaches & statisticians Other actors included Cosmo the mascot, officials, TV crews & workers *I decided to focus on the BYU Student Fans	Social interactions, cheering and reactions to the game While I could have chosen from a variety of activities--like the the actual game--the players in the game (which I did actually pay a lot of attention to), I chose to focus on the surrounding crowd because I thought it would be a better practice experience. *I decided to focus on cheering

The PLACE: Smith Field House

The ACTORS: BYU Volleyball Fans

ACTIVITY: Cheering

ACTIVITY: Social Interaction

There are two main types of social situations

1. Cluster of Social Situations: where you can observe several social situations from one space, because they are all linked by location--This is what I did for the volleyball game, but I chose to focus on specific actors in this place.
2. Network of Social situations: where an individual or a group moves from different locations with different actors and activities, and therefore different--but related--social situations.

Important things to remember when observing participants is to make sure that the social situations that you observe are simple (one social situation), accessible, unobtrusive, permissible, and in a place where a specific activity frequently occurs.

I was a participant observer in this situation, meaning that my purpose was to 1. engage in activities appropriate to the situation AND 2. observe the social situation (whereas an ordinary participant's only goal is to engage in the activity)

I don't want to get too technical, but there are 5 levels of participation that I want to briefly cover before diving into my observations:

Type of Participant	Description
Non participant	No involvement w/ people & activities; strictly an observer
Passive	Present in the scene of action, but basically just a bystander or a spectator
Moderate	Maintains a balance between being an insider and an outsider
Active	Does what others are doing to understand the culture—not just for acceptance
Complete	Knows the rules, understand the culture and participates

My Experience/Findings with Participant Observation

• Huge Differences Between Fans! There were the:
• Stereotypical high-school-boy fans
• types of activities they engaged in included:
• Harassing the opposing team--comments included  mentioning how small a players head was relative to his body, commenting on the short length of players shorts (negatively), and sarcastically telling the team to "watch out for the net!" while serving, or warning them not to get their mustache caught in the net.
• Yelling at the top of their lungs--regardless of whether the point was for the BYU team or Stanford team; when the point was for the BYU team, clapping, smiling, excitedly/happily yelling, hugging and high fives were common behaviors; when the point was for the Stanford team, it was common to hear angry yells accompanied by furrowed eye brows, arms raised in disbelief in the air, and snide comments
• Jumping, Dancing and Singing--This, as yelling, was observed in both negatively and positively perceived situation. Jumping was very common in both situations. Between points, music was often played and BYU fans would sing along with the song and dance. Some dancing was coordinated, while most seemed to be spontaneous--and somewhat awkward.

More observation on other types of BYU Fans and at other games is necessary for conclusive findings.

This was definitely a fun thing to do, as an observer it's important to pay attention to things that you would usually not notice. The job of the Thalamus (in our brain) is primarily to ignore different things that we either don't need, or don't want, to pay attention to. If the average person tried to pay attention to minute details, they would "overload." However, as an observer, it is important to pay attention to those minute details to find trends and regularity in activities. Can't wait to practice some more participant observations and to do them in Italy!