Naturalistic Research

          (Naturalistic Methods) Naturalistic Research

Naturalistic research is designed to describe and measure the behavior of people or animals as it occurs in their everyday lives. The behavior may be measured as it occurs, or it could already have been recorded by others, or it may be recorded on videotape to be coded at a later time. In any case, however, because it involves the observation of everyday behavior, a basic diffi - culty results—the rich and complex data that are observed must be organized into meaningful measured variables that can be analyzed. One of the goals of

this chapter is to review methods for turning observed everyday behavior into measured variables. 

         Naturalistic research approaches are used by researchers in a variety of disciplines, and the data that form the basis of naturalistic research methods can be gathered from many different sources in many different ways. These range from a clinical psychologist’s informal observations of his or her clients, to another scientist’s more formal observations of the behaviors of animals in the wild, to an analysis of politicians’ speeches, to a videotaping of children playing with their parents in a laboratory setting. Although these approaches frequently involve qualitative data, there are also techniques for turning observations into quantitative data, and we will discuss both types in this chapter. 

          In many cases, naturalistic research is the only possible approach to collecting data. For instance, whereas researchers may not be able to study the impact of earthquakes, fl oods, or cult membership using experimental research designs, they may be able to use naturalistic research designs to collect a wide variety of data that can be useful in understanding such phenomena. 

         One particular advantage of naturalistic research is that it has ecological validity. Ecological validity refers to the extent to which the research is conducted in situations that are similar to the everyday life experiences of the participants (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1968). In naturalistic research the people whose behavior is being measured are doing the things they do every day, and in some cases they may not even know that their behavior is being recorded. In these cases, reactivity is minimized and the construct validity of the measures should therefore be increased.