Participant Observation as a Methodology in Health Psychology to Study the Practice of Health Care on Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

Participant observation in this context refers to a specific health psychology research methodology in which the researcher takes on a role as participant observer in the daily routine of the health care in a natural situation of everyday work. The researcher immerses himself/herself in the institutional context and into the diabetes mellitus health care setting in order to experience the daily routine of treatment and prevention. To register the observations and data collection he/she uses technical resources: field notes, self-analyses notes, reflective journals and interviews. This set of collected data is organized and analyzed in a critical movement between the experience of the participant researcher and the health psychology theoretical reference on the treatment and prevention of diabetes mellitus. The results are relative to local and institutional micro-analyses and must be compared with other researches carried out in similar organizational contexts and methodologies.