Advantages:
1. What people say they do is often different from what they actually do so observations may be more valid than questionaires or interviews
2. It gives a more realistic picture of spontaneous behaviour. It is likely to have high ecological validity (basically it has high realism unlike lab experiments where participants are likely to have demand characteristics affecting their behaviour, alternating it so it's not natural)
3. It provides measures of conducting preliminary investigations in a new area of research, to produce hypotheses for future investigations
Disadvantages:
1. There can be little of no control of extraneous variables which may mean that something unknown to the observer may account for the bahaviour observed
2. The observer may "see" what they expect to see. This is called observer bias. This bias may mean that different observers "see" different things, which leads to low interobserver reliability (basically whether or not two different observers can agree on what they "saw")
3. If participants don't know they are being observed there are ethical problems such as deception and invasion of privacy. If participants do know they're being observed it may alter their behaviour to not be natural.
Hope that helped. It's taken from my psychology notes I made in class.
1. What people say they do is often different from what they actually do so observations may be more valid than questionaires or interviews
2. It gives a more realistic picture of spontaneous behaviour. It is likely to have high ecological validity (basically it has high realism unlike lab experiments where participants are likely to have demand characteristics affecting their behaviour, alternating it so it's not natural)
3. It provides measures of conducting preliminary investigations in a new area of research, to produce hypotheses for future investigations
Disadvantages:
1. There can be little of no control of extraneous variables which may mean that something unknown to the observer may account for the bahaviour observed
2. The observer may "see" what they expect to see. This is called observer bias. This bias may mean that different observers "see" different things, which leads to low interobserver reliability (basically whether or not two different observers can agree on what they "saw")
3. If participants don't know they are being observed there are ethical problems such as deception and invasion of privacy. If participants do know they're being observed it may alter their behaviour to not be natural.
Hope that helped. It's taken from my psychology notes I made in class.
