As guests in the village, Haberer and her family enjoyed the traditional Arab generosity and hospitality of many families, particularly the parents of the schoolmates of her children. She was free to come and go throughout the village and used this freedom to seek out conversations with women living in all quarters of the village, from the wealthier to the poorest sections. As a member of the village, she joined in wedding festivities and shared the grief of friends at funerals. She also exchanged visits with female schoolteachers, who were the only other women in the village with post-secondary education.

After ten months of participant observation, Harberer sought additional data by tape recording 25 life histories of women and conducting extensive informal interviews with women across all socio-economic levels, from large to small families, and older as well as younger women. She also conducted structured interviews with 125 women. In addition, she arranged for secondary students to write essays on "The Arab Village Woman." These essays were analyzed using content analysis methods. She visited schools and attended after school activities and lectures for women in the village. She also sought and used every opportunity to talk with men, who were quite interested in what she was writing down in her notebooks.

Available data were not neglected. To put her observations in a historical context, she read all she could find on the history of the area and the village, from Turkish occupation to current Israeli domination. This included examining 20 years of court records and analysis of unpublished data about the village and local area from records from the Bureau of Statistics in Jerusalem.

Haberer based her analysis and the interpretation of her data on social science concepts. She analyzed the lives of the women in terms of the social dynamics of village life, its power and authority structure, social control mechanisms, and individual and group strategies for influencing decisions. These concepts became real from her observations of day-to-day life in the village. She concluded that the women were unhappy over the traditional prerogatives of men in marriage making, securing education, employment, physical mobility, and in clothing styles. Still, adult women felt secure, productive, and satisfied as mothers, wives, homemakers, and as family members and villagers. The women participated in joint decision making with their husbands and had considerable authority within the household.

Conducting a participant observation study

Most participant observation investigations go through three phases:

• Preparing for participant observation;
• Conducting the observation, called the field work phase of the investigation; and
• Analysis and interpreting the findings and preparing a report.

Figure 13.1 shows the sequence of these three phases

The double-headed arrows in Figure 13.1 show the interactions among decisions made as part of the planning activities. All decisions begin with the formulation of the initial topic or problem to be investigated

Participant observation methods are ideally suited when the investigator has a broad idea for a study and wants to obtain detailed information about a topic before committing to a specific focus for the investigation. In the process of data collection, the initial idea for the investigation may be modified or even discarded in favor of a new set of questions

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