13 Jun IDENTIFY A SCENE TO OBSERVE (PICKING FROM ANY NUMBER OF SETTINGS, ACTIVITIES, ENCOUNTERS, EXCHANGES) IN WHICH YOU MUST PRIMARILY RELY ON SIGHT, NOT SOUND, FOR DATA. SPEND AT LEAST AN HOUR OBSERVING.
Before implementing changes, you should accurately determine the current condition. This research requires observing people and how they interact with their environment. This assignment is developed to give you the observational experience, opportunities to document what you are seeing and reporting your discoveries in a formal paper.
I’ve given you an example of how I did my observational experience when I was a graduate student taking a qualitative research methods course.
Observational Exercise
• The objective of this exercise is not to become a participant observer – that is unrealistic for the time and settings allowed – but to experience the simple (or not so simple) reality of being an observer. The challenge here is primarily to observe, as carefully as possible, some setting of your choosing. I will ask you to take notes and to be attentive to what you write down, and what you do not write down. What does your lens catch? What does it miss?
• The exercise: Identify a scene to observe (picking from any number of settings, activities, encounters, exchanges) in which you must primarily rely on sight, not sound, for data. Spend at least an hour observing. Take careful notes on what you see.
• Then, put together a short write up of your experience – no more than 4 (double-spaced, 12-point font, ragged right margin) pages to describe what you saw. In this report, try to draw from the directly observable data to also interpret, speculate, and extrapolate from the scene. Make sure you distinguish carefully what you saw from what you think might be happening, i.e. your interpretation or speculation.
• What can you can infer from people’s appearances, or from their observable behaviors? Do not try to exhaustively cover everything you see; a segment of the action will serve as well as a “whole scene.”
• Include up to a half page to report what you learned about the process of gathering data and writing your observations. How would you equip yourself to do it again? Observational Exercise • The objective of this exercise is not to become a participant observer – that is unrealistic for the time and settings allowed – but to experience the simple (or not so simple) reality of being an observer. The challenge here is primarily to observe, as carefully as possible, some setting of your choosing. I will ask you to take notes and to be attentive to what you write down, and what you do not write down. What does your lens catch? What does it miss? • The exercise: Identify a scene to observe (picking from any number of settings, activities, encounters, exchanges) in which you must primarily rely on sight, not sound, for data. Spend at least an hour observing. Take careful notes on what you see. • Then, put together a short write up of your experience – no more than 3 (double-spaced, 12-point font) pages to describe what you saw. In this report, try to draw from the directly observable data to also interpret, speculate, and extrapolate from the scene. Make sure you distinguish carefully what you saw from what you think might be happening, i.e. your interpretation or speculation. • What can you can infer from people’s appearances, or from their observable behaviors? Do not try to exhaustively cover everything you see; a segment of the action will serve as well as a “whole scene.” • Include up to a half page to report what you learned about the process of gathering data and writing your observations. How would you equip yourself to do it again?
Part I – Observation Experience
Comments: Extra stuff is here about the background and setting. For people not familiar with the setting of an Air Force Base, I’ve written background and setting descriptions. Skip to the Observation section if desired.
I was disappointed that my hypothesis did not prove correct. However, by walking through the store after the observation time some of my hypothesis was vindicated when I found people forming groups inside the store.
I like to watch group dynamics. The interactions between people draw my eyes’ attention. The human dynamic makes this interesting, but only if they are interacting. As far as my lens goes, if people aren’t interacting, there’s nothing happening.
Background. When people agree to defend the United States by putting on a military uniform, they are commonly referred to as being “in” the military. Many papers have been written about being “in” the military, but I think the meaning is unique and personal to each member of the armed forces. To me, after 17 years of being on active duty wearing the Air Force uniform, I am “in” the military just as a non-military person is “in” society. The military lifestyle is a microcosm of the larger American way of life. In our ranks we have upstanding citizens, caring parents, honest and hard-working men and women as our airmen, soldiers, sailors and marines. We have married, single, homosexual and heterosexual people. We have pedophiles, wife-beaters, thieves and embezzlers. The services draw from the population of the United States and representatives from good and bad influences raise their hands to take oaths of service.
People serving in the military differ from society at large because we have volunteered to protect our nation by giving our lives if necessary. This calling is beyond the scope of the non-military US citizen. This contract puts military leaders and supervisors in the precarious role of choosing who might be put in harm’s way. Because of this responsibility that separates the military from civilians, the military has an additional code of conduct, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that holds
members to different standards than civilian citizens. The UCMJ draws a line in out society and encourages military members to live in military-only housing enclaves. For the Air Force, this is called “living on base.”
When military members live on base, they live in a partially closed society. First, they live inside a fence with guards controlling access to the base—no visitors get through unannounced. Also, neighbors know the income of the people living next door—the pay scales are published on the internet! The neighborhoods are stratified by military position and rank. Extensive rule sets are in place to ensure conformity and community standards are met. Neighbors often work in proximity with each other during duty hours, and they socialize with each other off duty.
A base, such as Hanscom Air Force Base (AFB) located between Lexington and Concord MA, has amenities such as a gym, a grocery store, a discount store, schools, fire and police services, day care, restaurants, a barber shop, youth centers and more.
The Assignment
I observed the behaviors of people entering the base exchange (BX) food court of Hanscom AFB. I chose this observation because I hypothesized that off-duty military people would hold impromptu meetings or exchanges that would be considered “work”.
Setting Description
The BX is a K-Mart style discount store that is part of a shopping complex on the military base. Access is restricted to people who have professional or personal relationships with the base community. However, only uniformed military personnel and their families are authorized to shop in the discount store and the grocery store.
The food court is home to a Burger King and the New England ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts. In addition to the food and coffee services, a barber shop, nail salon, beauty shop, dry cleaners, optical shop, GNC, florist, and several transient vendor kiosks hawking wares of Boston Red Sox, military paraphernalia, sunglasses and costume jewelry are around the perimeter of a seating area.
I positioned myself where I could see the main entrance of the shopping complex which opened to the food court seating area (mostly behind me). As patrons entered, the
food court area was to their left, the BX entry ahead, and the barber shops and other services along a hallway to the right.
Observations (1:56 pm to 3:15pm, Saturday 4 March 06)
People entering through automatic doors at main entrance. They enter, walk in about 20 feet and then look around as if to figure out where to go next. Gaits vary from meander/wander, to stroll, to determined/focused. Many couples (male-female) that I assume to be husband and wife.
Groups Observed:
Families with kids, workers on break, military in uniform (navy, army, AF), teen
age girls, retired military
Attire:
I found a couple different sets of clothing people were wearing: casual and
uniforms.
For casual clothes, people commonly wore jeans with winter jackets. For shirts,
sweaters, sweatshirts, t-shirts and polo shirts were all common. Tennis shoes or casual shoes with very few dress shoes were seen. Some people were dressed in casual fleece or nylon sweats. Some people appeared to be dressed to go to or from the gym, but others were wearing them as casual clothing. Many of the shirts and jackets showed the wearer’s identity to be aligned with the US or a military service.
For people wearing military uniforms, most were utility (battle dress, camouflage) uniforms. Most of them were Navy and Army. The army and navy military members were likely on base for weekend reserve duty. I counted two people wearing Air Force service dress uniforms (“Class A”), which usually means they are part of a formal event.
An easily identifiable subset of the casual clothes set was military retirees. While I was not able to determine how many retirees were observed, many people who appeared to be military retirement age wore clothing (hats, jackets or shirts) that
identified them as retired military. Navy veterans often wore hats that stated both their retired status and their alignment with a particular ship.
Group Behavior and Dynamics
Many groups (two or more people) would arrive or depart as groups, but would separate into individuals while shopping or receiving vendor services. The groups arrived in with associations that appeared to be family (husband/wife or parent/child). The largest group seen appeared to be made of a father, mother, three kids and one friend. Other than this group, most groups were two or three people. Common groupings included parent with one or two children, a husband and wife pairing, or a group of two or three teenage girls.
Some groups formed with employees from the BX and vendors at the kiosks. When employees were on breaks, they went to the food court at sat at a table. As others took breaks, they would join the group at the table and leave as they went back to work. Some of the vendors at the kiosks would join the groups at the table and either sit down with the employees or stand so they could better monitor the activity at their kiosks.
The vendors, while in competition with each other for traffic at their kiosks, would form transient groups of two or three for social discussions or arranging for another to watch his or her kiosk while the other went to the restroom or outside the building for a few minutes.
The personnel who arrived in military uniform usually arrived in pairs or trios. The gender mix was MMM, MMF or FF(F). These groups arrived with no apparent focus or urgency to accomplish specific tasks during their visit to the BX. They would separate and reform with their original grouping or with others also in uniform and eventually depart with a group.
During my time of observation, I saw one group form that appeared to be a unique social marker. Two groups of two (FF, MF) started a a lively discussion where the social aspects appeared to be the main purpose of forming. They appeared to thoroughly enjoy the interaction.
Two other times that groups formed, they involved me. While I am not assigned to the base and have no regular business there, a military member I was assigned with at another base 15 years ago recognized me and struck up a conversation as I was setting up my observation. Our discussion was a quick “catch-up” conversation talking about where we’d been assigned over the last years. Also, at the completion of the observation, a husband/wife dyad came over to my table. This was a couple who my wife and I see socially, through the base chapel, and our sons are in the same scout troop. They told me about a change to the base housing policy. We discussed some potential ramifications of the policy and how we thought it could be better implemented.
Hypothesis
I started this observation with the hypothesis that many people would arrive at the BX and form transient groups in the form of impromptu business meetings. I believed the environment of working, living, playing, shopping and worshipping together would cause some spill-over effects at the BX. I hypothesized that I would see groups of co-workers form to engage each other on work issues or complete communication transactions that were started in the office environment. I did not observe this activity on the Saturday afternoon of my observation. I believe my choice of times would have changed my outcomes. I believe if I wanted to see more off-duty interactions, I should have done my observations at 9:00 am on a Saturday or during lunch times. These would be times that I would expect a higher concentration of military members in the BX.
My Biases
Because I am in the Air Force and I lived and worked on Hanscom AFB from July 2000 to July 2003, I have an in-depth knowledge about the Air Force culture, standards and behaviors.
When I see a similarly-aged male/female couple, I assume they are husband and wife or they are both military members. If only one of the couple is a military member, there is a 90% chance the male is in the military. If a male, similar age, dyad is formed, I assume they are co-workers or neighbors who traveling together for convenience or to
David Long HBS 4070 Experiential Exercise 17 March 2006
complete a specific task (such as eating lunch). I would not consider the situation to be a homosexual relationship because homosexual behavior is generally unacceptable in the military community and it is reason for banishment from military service.
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