Breaking down the question
This is a 10-mark question with a single, focused demand: identify and explain the ethical issues specific to participant observation. The verb explain means each issue should be named and briefly elaborated, not merely listed. The qualifier — participant observation as a method of collecting data — keeps the answer tied to the practicalities of fieldwork rather than to ethics in the abstract.
The examiner is probing whether you understand why this particular method is ethically fraught: the researcher enters the lives of those studied, often over long periods, which raises problems of consent, deception, privacy and involvement that a detached survey does not. Grounding is available in the note on techniques of data collection.
How to approach it
Open with a one-line definition of participant observation and a sentence on why it is ethically distinctive. Then work through the principal ethical issues — informed consent, covert observation and deception, privacy and confidentiality, harm, and over-involvement — explaining each in a compact way and, where possible, illustrating. Close with a brief note on how researchers try to manage these tensions.
Model answer
Participant observation is a qualitative method in which the researcher joins a social group and takes part in its everyday life over an extended period while systematically observing it. Because the researcher becomes personally involved with the people studied, the method raises ethical issues more acute than those of detached techniques such as the survey.
The first and central issue is informed consent. Ideally, subjects should know they are being studied and agree to it. Yet in observing a group in its natural setting, obtaining genuine consent from everyone present is often impractical, and constantly reminding people of the researcher's purpose may alter the very behaviour being studied. This tension between valid consent and naturalistic data is intrinsic to the method.
The second issue is covert research and deception. Where the researcher conceals their identity to gain access — as in classic covert studies of closed or deviant groups — participants are deceived and denied the chance to refuse. Covert work may yield data unobtainable otherwise, but it violates the principle of honesty and treats people as means rather than ends. Even in overt research, the observer may downplay the extent of recording, raising smaller deceptions.
The third issue is privacy and confidentiality. Prolonged immersion exposes the researcher to intimate, sometimes discrediting, information about individuals. Erving Goffman's attention to the backstage of social life reminds us how much private conduct fieldwork can reveal. The researcher is obliged to protect identities through anonymisation and to guard sensitive data from misuse, yet detailed ethnographic description can make individuals or communities recognisable despite pseudonyms.
The fourth issue is the risk of harm. Publication may expose participants to stigma, legal jeopardy or reprisal, and the researcher's very presence can disrupt the group. Where illegal or dangerous activity is observed, the researcher faces a dilemma between the promise of confidentiality and wider legal or moral obligations.
A fifth issue concerns the researcher's own involvement. Deep participation can lead to over-identification, or going native, compromising objectivity, while the relationships formed create obligations that make eventual withdrawal and candid reporting ethically uncomfortable. There is also the question of reciprocity — what the researcher owes the community that hosted them.
Researchers seek to manage these tensions through overt rather than covert designs where feasible, negotiated consent with key gatekeepers, careful anonymisation, ethical review and reflexive honesty about their role. None of these wholly dissolves the dilemmas, which is why participant observation remains among the most ethically demanding of sociological methods.
Examiner's perspective
For ten marks the examiner wants the issues that are specific to participant observation, not a generic recitation of research ethics. Consent difficulties in natural settings, covert observation and the problem of over-involvement are the distinctive ones, and naming them shows methodological understanding.
Because the command word is explain, each issue should be briefly developed rather than merely listed, ideally with a concrete illustration such as covert studies or the risk of going native. A closing line on how researchers attempt to mitigate these dilemmas rounds off the answer and demonstrates the balanced awareness examiners reward.