Research Methods

My Role as Participant Observer

I performed a *multitude of roles* during the Budget Builder project, which allowed me to take part in almost all of the *discussions about the site's development*. My technical responsibilities covered a number of areas including designing the overall structure of the web site, developing a consistent graphic look, programming, designing and linking a set of databases and maintaining the web server. I also was responsible for gathering user input, encouraging community participation, and in later stages of the project, some of the technical management responsibilities.

This wide-ranging set of responsibilities made it necessary for me to meet regularly with all of the other people involved in the project. In particular, I met often with Andrew Gordon and other staff of the Graduate School of Public Affairs (GSPA); Anne Hallett, Diana Lauber, and Chris Warden of the Cross City Campaign (CCC); and Joseph Olchefske, Geri Lim, Jay Iman, a group of school principals, and several members of the Seattle Public Schools (SPS) budget office and technical staff. In addition, there were many single meetings with educational activists, people from the Seattle Education Association (the Seattle teacher's union), other principals, school staff, and other community members. The only project discussions I was not part of were those directly between Cross City staff and Seattle Schools staff. In most of those cases, at least the subjects of the meetings, and often the details, were reported to me at other meetings.

The core project team consisted of people from the three main organizations (GSPA, CCC, and SPS) who contributed regularly to the development: Andy, me, the Cross City staff, and SPS budget and technical staff. In some ways, I had a unique position in that each organization thought I was working for them. My office and educational association was through the University and GSPA, so I was part of that group. I was being paid for my technical and community work by Cross City and was in agreement with their community-centered philosophy, so I belonged to that group. I was the primary contact person for SPS, and at later stages, they also paid for some of my technical work, so I was considered part of that group.

Although all of the main actors from GSPA, CCC, and SPS got along amicably to a large degree, with regard to citizen participation, we were divided in such a way that GSPA and Cross City often felt at odds with SPS. However, this division never affected my overall relationships with the people in any of the organizations. At first, I was considered a technical consultant by the SPS budget and technical staff. As the project lasted longer and became an important part of the school district's future strategy, I was looked upon more like a regular staff person who happened to be working somewhere else.

Because of my friendly relationships with people in all three organizations, everybody considered me to be on their side. With GSPA and Cross City, I was responsive to everyone's concerns as we developed the Budget Builder and *worked towards community participation*. From the point of view of SPS, I was doing a good job of completing the technical work that was necessary to finish their product. Although community members outside the three organizations were not involved much in the project, as I describe later, when we did meet with them, I came describing a wonderful new tool that they could use. They also felt I was working on their side.

Throughout the project, I was cooperative and rarely antagonistic. I received many comments about the high quality of my work and thanks for helping with the project. People also mentioned how nice it was to work with me and how well I listened and responded to concerns. All of that combined to generate positive relationships with everyone associated with the project.

In the Project Description and Analysis, I discuss in detail how our cooperativeness was one of the factors that reduced the amount of community participation in the project. Since cooperativeness is an important reason why I was successful in gathering my research data, did I undermine my participatory goals in order to gain data? I don't believe so. First of all, I'm typically friendly and helpful, so there was no subterfuge or veneer of cooperation to insinuate myself with any of the participants. Furthermore, cooperation was the style of the GSPA/Cross City working group. During the occasional *confrontations over community participation*, I typically spoke of the desirability of participation, but followed the lead of other members with more authority (Andy and Anne) in regard to deciding when to stop pushing. Later in the project, my cooperative approach became an asset that allowed me to be more forceful in pushing for *community-friendly features* such as access to additional data. Because I had earned the respect of the SPS budget staff, I was able to obtain concessions without creating upset.

Outside of the technical project, the relationships that I had created over the many months of project work made it easy for me to obtain interviews for the dissertation. Everyone was willing to talk to me at length, and I believe with candor. The only discomfort I sensed was that some people were a bit uncomfortable with the tape recorder at first, although everyone appeared to forget about it quickly. Also, in the interviews with Seattle Schools staff, there was some tension when talking about the community participation disagreements, but again that went away when we moved on to other topics.

Particularly because of the good relationships I had with all of the people working on the project, participant observation was an ideal research method. I had access to the political, social, economic, and technical processes and to individual people that I would not likely have had any other way. It is possible that as an outside researcher that I would have been able to attend project meetings, and receive copies of electronic mail and printed documents. However, the materials I would have received would probably have been edited by the participants to show themselves in a better light. More importantly, I would not have had access to many of the informal conversations and phone calls that occurred. It is also likely that without a prior relationship, the interview subjects would have been less candid with me.

On the other hand, being so deeply involved in the project surely introduced biases and blind spots into my research. In particular, *my increasingly detailed involvement with the technical aspects of the design* took me away from the community participation work I had planned to focus on. Andy mentioned that at several times he refrained from starting conversations about theoretical or design issues because it seemed like I was too busy trying to solve some technical problem.

In the user-centered design community, it's almost a foundational statement to say that the more work designers have put into a technology, the more resistant they are to changing it. Many methods have been developed to work around that problem, such as using low-fidelity prototypes or gathering user input ever-earlier in the design process. There's no reason why I should be different, and I may have ignored input about changes to the Budget Builder that I didn't want to make.

My positive relationships with people may have also influenced the type of feedback about the Budget Builder that I heard. Although I repeatedly asked people to be honest about the problems the saw with the program—and many suggestions for improvement were made—I always felt that there might have been negative criticisms that weren't reaching me. Similarly, in the interviewing, it is also possible that people did not express negative feelings about other people with whom they knew I had a good relationship.

Overall, however, I believe that my ability to gather research data for this project was enhanced by my position as a member of all three main working groups and by my positive relationships with everyone in those groups.

Overview | Fieldwork | Objectivity vs. Subjectivity |
My Role as Participant Observer | Description of the Data

Contents | Introduction | Background | Methods | Description | Conclusion | References