 Participant observation. Participant observation is one type of data collection method typically used in qualitative research. It is a widely used methodology in many disciplines, particularly cultural anthropology, European ethnology, sociology, communication studies, human geography and social psychology. Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals such as religious, occupational, subcultural group, or a particular community and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. The method originated in the field research of social anthropologists, especially Bronislaw Malinowski and his students in Britain, the students of France, Boas in the United States, and in the later urban research of the Chicago School of Sociology.