Learning to see: lessons from a participatory observation research project in public spaces

Abstract

This article outlines the development and implementation of participatory research methodology centred on observational techniques. It discusses theoretical understandings of the methodology and how it works in practice. The research explored the use of public spaces by different social, ethnic and activity groups across the course of a 12‐month period, drawing on the experiences of, and data collected by local non‐academic researchers who were trained in a non‐participatory semi‐structured observation method. The article discusses how this method was developed and implemented and considers some of the issues around how participatory research works in practice.

Keywords:

• participatory research
• observation methods
• public space

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for funding the research, and the co‐researchers for their dedication and enthusiasm for the project.

Notes

1. The research was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for 18 months. Of this, 12 months was dedicated to data collection, including user surveys, semi‐structured interviews and the observation methods discussed here. The research aimed to provide detailed, ‘real life’ data about how different people used different public spaces over the course of one year, and to analyse how interactions in these spaces differ by age, gender or race/ethnicity.

2. Here a distinction is being made in the traditional sense between ‘participative’ and ‘non‐participative’ observation. The method was ‘non‐participative’ given the minimised interaction between the observers and any users of the public spaces. However, the research itself remains participatory in that it involved ‘non‐academic’ co‐researchers.

3. More discussion of our recruitment strategy is available in Clark, Holland, Peace, and Katz (2005).