Methoden vergleichen

	Teilnehmende Beobachtung	Vertrauenswürdigkeitskriterien in der qualitativen Forschung
Fachgebiet	Qualitative Forschung	Qualitative Forschung
Familie	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Entstehungsjahr	1922	1985
Urheber	Bronislaw Malinowski	Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba
Typ	Method	Framework
Wegweisende Quelle	Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465026432	Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. SAGE Publications. ISBN: 978-0803924314
Aliasnamen	ethnographic observation, participatory observation, overt observation, immersive observation	trustworthiness criteria, credibility, dependability, confirmability
Verwandt	4	4
Zusammenfassung	Participant observation is a qualitative research method in which the researcher embeds themselves within a community, organization, or social setting for an extended period, engaging in the activities and relationships of the group while systematically observing and documenting behavior, interactions, and cultural meaning. Pioneered by Malinowski in the 1920s and developed in anthropology, the method has been adopted across sociology, education, health sciences, and organizational research. The researcher functions as both insider (participating in group activities) and outsider (maintaining analytical distance), generating thick description—rich accounts of context, behavior, and meaning that reveal how people actually live and interact.	Trustworthiness is a framework for evaluating the quality and rigor of qualitative research, developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985) as an alternative to quantitative criteria (internal validity, external validity, reliability, objectivity). The framework comprises five criteria: credibility (findings are accurate and grounded in data), transferability (findings apply to other contexts), dependability (findings are consistent and defensible), confirmability (findings reflect the data and participants' perspectives, not researcher bias), and authenticity (research reflects diverse viewpoints and promotes understanding). This framework has become standard for assessing qualitative research across disciplines and guides researchers in designing and reporting rigorous qualitative studies.