Richard Fenno characterizes participant-observation research as a matter of “soaking” and “poking,” or, more formally, “gathering data by watching and talking to people in their natural habitats.” Lofland and Lofland define it as “the process in which an investigator establishes and sustains a many-sided and relatively long-term relationship with a human association in its natural setting for the purpose of developing a scientific understanding of that association.” For Dewalt and Dewalt it is “a method in which an observer takes part in the daily activities, rituals, interactions, and events of the people being studied as one of the means of learning the explicit and tacit aspects of their culture.”

Together, these definitions highlight important features of participant-observation research. It almost always takes place in a “natural setting” or “habitat.” Participant-observers generally study social phenomena directly, that is, rather than rely exclusively on participants' reports of their actions and experiences, or on experimental measures. Participant-observation research is “relatively long-term.” Ethnographers spend weeks, sometimes years in the field, establishing rapport with, observing, and engaging those whose actions and experiences they seek to explain, understand, or interpret. And participant-observation generally engages the researcher simultaneously as observer and participant, seeking a balance between the roles.

The method's principal advantage, and the reason I adopted it to conduct the empirical research for this study, is that it offers access to the meanings social experiences, interactions, and activities have for those who participate in them.