Naturalistic research
if you are data that more closely reflects the real lived experiences of the population of interest – naturalistic research (studies that approximate natural, uncontrived conditions) eliminate new areas of behavior – difficult philosophical issues/practical problems.
Challenge the validity
laboratories studies fail to
gather a detailed unprejudiced record of people's behaviors, beliefs and preferences
explore people's behavior in the context of their own work and life new intensively observed particular elements of context such as setting and artifacts
discover the tactic meanings and understandings that are common in communication and social interaction.
Naturalistic research methods study people in their natural environment – going into the field/replicating elements of the natural environment elsewhere
Basic tension – naturalism and positivism (or rationalism) as modes of inquiry
fundamentally different philosophical approach – direct opposition to traditional scientific norms – causualty, reality, generalizability, and objectivity. Acknowledging that research findings are idiographic, reflecting only one view of one environment
Naturalistic inquiry axioms – practical warnings (complex work processes) alert to political and social issues within organizations/ multiple viewpoints are recognized
Doing naturalistic research
first step move from specific research question to design it helps you answer that question – listen in on a number of reference transactions, extensive notes on whether patrons and librarians said and did.
More naturalistic – enable structs ever be observation of people in their natural environments
they have chosen to come to the library make use of it services a part of ordinary life
Identified patterns and themes – relied on signs and other conventions/watch the students struggle/try to guess how
Worthwhile to document recurrent ways in which discrete activities are produced performed and accomplished by members time and time again
can be used to develop better theories and models of behavior, better programs and systems.
Approaches and trade-offs
organized in three main dimensions degree of naturalism, type of insight, and resources required.
Degree of naturalism
high degree of naturalism – situations and interactions he observed were uncontrived and occurred in the context of participants own work and experience
less naturalistic – directly in the community did not engage
Type of insight
specify the types of insight that are particularly relevant to your interest
architecture: people navigate and orient themselves, design your study, on how and when people get confused
fundraising and marketing: how people talk about the library, they relate to its part of professional, personal and social lives, design your study to focus on people's feelings about the library
choose a naturalistic study in situations where you want to gain insight into people's naturally occurring behavior in natural settings
Resources required
can demand vast amounts of time – rich data to be collected and interpreted
wide array of naturalistic techniques developed
lightweight approaches: (rapid assessment techniques) brief and focused forays
full-blown approaches – engage fully with the chosen domain, direct participation, emphasize open-ended exploration and understanding
Specific techniques
numerous decisions: research design, data collection methods, and data analysis methods.
Field observation: researcher is not attempting to become engaged simply an observer
continuous monitoring or sampling
ethnography
detailed in-depth observation of people's behavior, beliefs and preferences – ongoing basis/daily lives next sentence months or years of fieldwork – time to structure interpret and write about
Contextual inquiry
rapidly gathering – use with an information system design projects/support the design process
spend several hours over the course of one or many days with participant of the system being designed new apprentice to the participants master
participant teaches the researcher about the work processes of interest
Cognitive work analysis
like conceptual inquiry, descriptive approach – help us understand how people actually perform the work
the environment, perceptual, cognitive, and ergonomic attributes of people who typically do the task
provided details of the ways – applied cognitive work analysis in the research (naturalistic study carried out within corporate setting) – served as a framework for data collection and analysis
seven dimensions new the environment new to the work to main new organization new line the task and work to main terms
decision-making terms
strategies that can be used
actors resources and values
Quasi-experiments
fixed research design, similar to an experiment, participants are assigned to conditions – in some systematic way
assigning people randomly to particular conditions is basically anti-naturalistic, quasi-experiments are way to introduce naturalistic elements while maintaining some control
Conclusion reveals the fascinating complexity of human behaviors and enables collection of rich visual verbal and physical data
elusiveness of what you want to measure/seeming infinity of techniques
combine richness of naturalistic techniques, rigor of controlled studies and validated instruments.
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