Question

Define naturalistic observation

Answer 1

Observations mean watching the behavior and reactions of individuals. There are 3 types of observational methods namely: controlled observations, naturalistic observations and participant observations.

Naturalistic observation is defined as a tool that social science researchers use in order to observe the behavior of individuals occurring in their natural environment without manipulating any variables.. Naturalistic observations involve observing the behaviors of individuals as they occur in the natural setting rather than a laboratory or artificial setting. The major advantage of this type of observation is that the behavior can be observed in the natural setting of the individual, thus the researcher is not manipulating the environment making the ecological validity high. However, naturalistic observations have few limitations; since the researcher is not manipulating the variables, the cause and effect relationship cannot be determined. Also since the variables are not controlled, it becomes less reliable and difficult for other researchers to repeat the experiment in the same way. Since naturalistic observations are done on a smaller sample, the results cannot be generalized as it may not be a true representation of the population. The researcher must be highly trained to detect certain behaviors that are psychologically significant.