The Role of Observation and Control in Laboratory and Field Research Settings

Abstract

Most of mainstream psychology today still entertains as an ideal the desirability of doing laboratory research. To be sure, much research is done outside the laboratory, but it is usually prefaced with special justifications or rationalizations because field work si seen as a compromise to be accepted rather than a desideratum. The primary reason for this seems to be the fact that the myth of the "laboratory as science par excellence" has been accepted by psychology. Even in those cases where necessity has forced psychologists to use other methods, the criteria of the "idealized lab" haunt them. For example, Ickes (1983, p. 19), after describing how the constraints of traditional methods forced him to take a natrualistic turn, concludes "it is possible to combine many of the best features of laboratory and field-observational research within a single basic paradigm for the study of unstructured dyadic interaction." My question is: Why is it even desirable to try to introduce some of the criteria of laboratory methods into field research? Are not the situations so different that a different set of criteria should apply? Is not the emergence of field reserach or "naturalistic observation" precisely due to the fact that the procedures of the laboratory were too restricted, because they were geared for a very specific type of situation and other procedures were demanded? The purpose of this paper is to show that naturalistic reserach is a special type of research situation that requires its own procedures, and that one does not have to use the criteria of the laboratory to evaluate it or confound it. Or better, this essay will try to show that laboratory and field research are variations of a deeper sense of research rigor and that a phenomenological approach is crucial in helping us understand this deepened sense of rigor.