Participant Observation in the Recreation Setting

Abstract

Participant observation of the social-psychological context for sport-group membership is reported as a non-intrusive way to examine an hypothesis that group members' behaviors toward each other would be incongruent with their espoused purposes of positive social relations. The research plan defined membership parameters, characteristic phenomena, and models of social systems, balancing subjective and objective perspectives. Data, including participant and direct observations, personal accounts, and attendance records were analyzed. The group experience was not inconsistent with the purpose of demonstrating friendship and other humanistic values. Participant observation was useful for studying this context of recreation participation and could be valuable in leisure study related to lifecycle, family, and peer-group concepts and in developing grounded theory associated with freedom, expressiveness, meaning and motivation in leisure.

KEYWORDS:

• Competition-cooperation
• field study
• social system
• sport group
• subjective leisure experience