Your book discusses that sometimes participant observation and intensive interviewing can be used in combination with one another. First describe one benefit of using mixed methods. Second, using the example of police-community relations, describe at least two ways that using observations and intensive interviewers together could be useful to uncover detailed information about police-community relations.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

First, one benefit of mixed methods is that the weaknesses of one type of method can be remedied by including another type of method. Second, using observations and intensive interviewing together may reveal information that you would not otherwise have known. For example, you had an interview with a police officer who described himself as calm and collected in every situation. Yet, when you observed him in the field, he was not always calm and collected. Doing both methods revealed important information you would not have known if you did not combine the methods. Another way is that using both type of research would be important is that it could provide greater confidence to your findings-if you found that police were often acting discriminatory toward certain types of people and then this was also revealed during your interviews. You'd have a greater reason to believe that your observations were correct if your interviews revealed something similar.