Students library are equipped with wi-fi connectivity for the students to do online study. Sometimes, while studying in library students remain online on Instant Messengers and indulge in conversation with their online friends. I will observe that how many times the students consider the Instant messenger beep as welcome break from studies and does the reaction towards IM is related to the interest in the topic of study. From this, I hope to arrive at the conclusion that if the study subject is uninteresting, does the student finds activities other than studies more interesting. This finding would then be compared with the student’s reaction to other activities in case of an interesting study topic. The setting of my observation will be at library.
I would remain an unacknowledged observer as I believe that informing the student about my study would lead to a conscious behavior by the observant and the result will not be precise
The type of behavior I would code for the particular student will be how many times, does a particular student get disturbed by the instant messenger and what are his reactions (code of 5 if the student instantly engages into the online conversation). Is the chat welcome or not at that particular time (differentiating it on the basis of study subject being of interest or not and accordingly assigning codes). Also, how many times the student himself initiates the chat or search for someone online (providing the code of 1 if student does not indulge in this activity)?
Part II
I agree with Sheri that if it’s being disclosed to husband-to-be that his behavior is being observed, he would become conscious and may alter his behavior. My question to Sheri is that he has acted as the unacknowledged participant in his study as he was present in the episodes as his sister-in-law’s assistant. As we have read that being an unacknowledged participant can sometimes impact the result of the study, what is the impact as per Sheri it had on his result of study?
Bibliography
Kaplan, A. (1998). The Conduct of Enquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science. Transaction Publishers.
Stangor, C. (2011). Research Methods for the Behavioral Sciences (4th ed.) . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
