Observations You can immerse yourself in the company culture and observe behaviors without any pre-conceived notions of what youre looking for or a working hypothesis to direct your study.
{"Image DocumentName": "Observations", "Image ImageDescription": "You can immerse yourself in the company culture and observe behaviors without any pre-conceived notions of what you\u2019re looking for or a working hypothesis to direct your study. This may actually lead you to a finding that you are not expecting, or a more complete picture of the situation. You can conduct observational research with an idea as to what you are looking for. You may even summarize your observations using checklists and other structured ways of organizing data. When it comes to data that may negatively reflect on one\u2019s self or on other people, face-to-face interviews and written surveys may yield inaccurate results. If anything, these survey methods measure respondents\u2019 attitudes --- attitudes that don\u2019t necessarily translate to actual behavior! Second, there is also the element of consciously or unconsciously wanting to appear socially acceptable. Responses may skew to side of consistent civil behavior, when in reality the opposite is true. And lastly, there are actions that people are just not aware of, or considerations that survey respondents may not find relevant to mention. For example, an employee may be answering a customer\u2019s query wrongly all the time said employee thinks his or her answer is right! To best gather data about the actual behaviors of persons in a workplace, observation as a research technique is recommended. You can observe various areas in the organization incognito, and see how employees react when they think that no one is watching. Or you can pretend to be a customer or visitor and see how you\u2019ll be treated. There are two ways you can go about observation as a research methodology: You can immerse yourself in the company culture and observe behaviors without any pre-conceived notions of what you\u2019re looking for or a working hypothesis to direct your study. This may actually lead you to a finding that you are not expecting, or a more complete picture of the situation. You can conduct observational research with an idea as to what you are looking for. You may even summarize your observations using checklists and other structured ways of organizing data. As mentioned, observation is an excellent way of gathering data about the practice of civility in a workplace. With observation you can observe a culture in vivo. But note that there are also limitations to observation as well. For one, you need an observer that is not only vigilant and capable, but also free from any perceptual bias. Second, you have to take caution in generalizing your observations. What you saw may just be an isolated event, and doesn\u2019t represent the norm. For best results, apply the scientific method when making observations (e.g. choose several times at random to make observations). Triangulate every data you gather with other sources of information.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}