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Advantages and Disadvantages of Participant Observation.

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Advantages and disadvantages of participant observation.

One advantage of performing a participant covert observation is that participant behave as they normally would do so this would make the observation valid when looking at the truants activities. Also by making it to the group the researcher can get the viewpoints of the participants rather than his own ones.
Another advantage is that it can dig into deep social interaction because the best way to truly understand what something is like is to experience it for ourselves. This closeness to peoples lived reality means that participant observation can give uniquely valid data.
Another advantage is that the researcher can explore new insights because the questions that he may ask are not fixed so he may discover load of things about the truants just may being with them and doing their activities.

But the are disadvantages of doing a participant covert observation and is that if the researcher studies small groups it may not be representative so if he is willing to get a more representative study he will need to be with other groups of truants but it will be very time consuming.
Another disadvantage is that is cannot be repeated for reliability because the results will always change with different groups so the information that it needs to collect from one group need to be massive but it is very time consuming in relation to the amount of data that it can collect.
Moreover if the researcher stays loads of time with the observed he may sympathise with the group and his results wont be valid because the researcher will be biased. Also by being covert the researcher may be at risk because the truants may be participant of criminal activities so if they get to know that the researcher is a fake member of the group they may get really angry so this would put the researcher at great risk. Also to get into the

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