Covert participant observation is a method in social science research. Participant observation involves a researcher joining the group he or she is studying, and in the case of covert observation, the researcher's status is not made known to the group.
Observation involves participating in activities over a period of time and therefore becoming an accepted part of the group. An example is the research for A Glasgow Gang Observed. A 26 year old schoolmaster at a Scottish Reformatory (ListD) school, who called himself James Patrick, went undercover with the help of one of his pupils to study the often violent behaviour of the teenagers in a gang in Glasgow. He concealed all his personal information for his own safety.
Read more about Covert Participant Observation: Advantages and Disadvantages
Famous quotes containing the words covert and/or observation:
“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
Successless wars, and poverty behind;
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“I should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not pure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the central fact.... There is wanting constant and accurate observation with enough of theory to direct and discipline it. But, above all, there is wanting genius.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)