Systematic Observation of Natural Social Phenomena

Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods

“…Attempting to systematize such approaches, more than 25 years ago Albert J. Reiss, Jr. (1971) advocated systematic social observation as a key measurement strategy for natural social phenomena. By systematic, Reiss meant that observation and recording are done according to explicit rules that permit replication; he also argued that the means of observation, whether a person or technology, must be independent of that which is observed.…”

Measuring Disorder: Observer Bias in Systematic Social Observations at Streets and Neighborhoods

“…Mastrofski et al (1996) investigated whether observers' personal views on community policing implementation biased their observation of police officers' community policing orientation and the officers' success in achieving compliance from citizens, but did not find evidence for such bias. On the other hand, Reiss (1971) found that observers' professional expertise (i.e., police training, a background in social science, or a background in law) affected their observation of police behavior. Additionally, in an experimental study, Yang and Pao (2015) investigated whether police officers perceived disorder (in photos) differently than students.…”

“…To avoid observer bias as much as possible, we suggest that future SSO studies, regardless of their topic, select a minimum number of observers, pay attention to allocation of observers over locations, subjects, or events, offer extensive training prior to observations and organize feedback meetings during the period of data collection. For some topics, it may be necessary or fruitful to select or reject observers based on their pre-existing attitudes or expertise; previous studies have shown that police officers and college students differed significantly in their observations of police behavior (Reiss 1971) and social disorder (Yang and Pao 2015). Fatigue and observer socialization may be avoided or reduced by ensuring short observation sessions, restricting the maximum number of observations per observer, and by organizing discussions among the observers about changed perceptions and feelings.…”

“…Therefore, by using SSO, we eliminate any issues with nonresponse, sampling decisions (e.g., whether researchers should interview adults versus adolescents, or new inhabitants versus individuals who lived in the area for a number of years), and the risk of socially desirable answers. Furthermore, SSO enables the precise recording of events prior to, during, and after the phenomena of interest and other conditions under which these phenomena are observed (Mastrofski et al 2010;Reiss 1971). Measuring phenomena through interviewing residents or key informants is by definition retrospective and therefore filtered by ''judgment and memory'' (Carter et al 1995, pp.…”

“…For example, 'Is litter present, yes or no?' Specific procedures dictate the unit of observation (e.g., streets, face blocks), the topic of observation (e.g., cigarette butts, dog feces), the duration of the observation (e.g., number of minutes) and the method of recording (e.g., on paper or by videotape; Reiss 1971). A typical SSO disorder study is organized as follows: in each neighborhood, a few locations are indicated as points of observation.…”