Participant Observation
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Throughout the fall 2003 semester, the Sociology 200 B class has been divided into groups and participating in seven in class activities the particular group that I worked in consisted of the following members: Jessica , Jessica, Amanda, Laura, and Aaron. This group consistently had high attendance. There may have been one or two, at the most, instances where one or two people were absent. The purpose, as far as I am concerned, of having these groups was to observe how the students interacted with each other with a task at hand. Each member of the class was involved in participant observation which is a type of research in which the researcher joins in activities with the subjects. While working on an activity as a group, each person was observing the others; everyone was both the researcher and the subject at the same time. I strongly believe that the "Hawthorne effect" had a strong impact on the members of the group in which I participated. Because each person was aware of the fact that he or she was the subject of a research experiment, they all seemed to heavily participate. In a normal environment in which a group is working on an activity, there seems to always be one or two people who put little to no effort into participating in discussions and decisions. In the group, this effect seemed to linger through out all seven exercises...