


However, naturalistic observation could more simply involve observing shoppers in a grocery store, children on a school playground, or psychiatric inpatients in their wards. She examined such things as chimpanzee’s social structure, mating patterns, gender roles, family structure, and care of offspring by observing them in the wild. Jane Goodall’s famous research on chimpanzees is a classic example of naturalistic observation. Dr. Goodall spent three decades observing chimpanzees in their natural environment in East Africa. Thus naturalistic observation is a type of field research (as opposed to a type of laboratory research). Naturalistic observation is an observational method that involves observing people’s behavior in the environment in which it typically occurs. There are several different types of observational research designs that will be described below. The data that are collected in observational research studies are often qualitative in nature but they may also be quantitative or both (mixed-methods). As described previously, observational research is non-experimental because nothing is manipulated or controlled, and as such we cannot arrive at causal conclusions using this approach. More generally, the goal is to obtain a snapshot of specific characteristics of an individual, group, or setting.

The goal of observational research is to describe a variable or set of variables. The term observational research is used to refer to several different types of non-experimental studies in which behavior is systematically observed and recorded. Describe the strengths and weakness of each observational research method.List the various types of observational research methods and distinguish between each.
