Disadvantages Of Alder's Model

3. Alder and Alder’s model of membership in field research include 3 levels of membership; Peripheral Membership, Active Membership and Complete Membership. First, Peripheral Membership is when the researcher has little to no knowledge about the participants and their environment. An example of this would be Jen's research on homeschooling mothers. She was not a mother at the time and she did not know what iT was like to homeschool. She was completely removed from the situation. An advantage that comes with this type of membership would be the distance that keeps the researcher and participants separate. This eliminates conflict of interest and potential personal conflicts. For example, crossing certain boundaries, if the researcher were to

With the researcher partaking in this "undercover" role, the participants have no idea that they are being studied and this has its advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that the participants can act freely and the researchers are able to observe and collect fieldnotes because the participants are "acting natural". The participants may feel constrained or under watch. A disadvantage is that the researcher may be limited to the information that they find due to their undercover status. The researcher is unable to have in depth interviews with this type of investigation because their purpose of a researcher is not

I work closely with all of the people that I am working with, so I think that some of the people that I have interviewed have held back because they wanted to be professional and keep that boundary. The first interview that I did was not as in-depth and I think that part of that had to do with the participant wanting to remain professional. While one of the participants, I know very well and he had a lot to say. Ethically, the RDs work with students and sometimes students in crisis. I have to be careful what I ask due to the confidentiality with those students. As a researcher, I do not need to know specifics, such as names or locations of the incidents but I know a lot about certain scenarios that are easily identifiable to people reading my paper. In my paper, I will be sure not to include as much detail about those incidents, to respect the privacy of those students. I am also finding that some of the RDs want to talk bad about other people in the department or other RDs. That could be harmful for the working relationships of Residence Life and I don't think that the specifics need to be shared. I think that because I work as a student staff member, I have a pretty good understanding when I comes to the language and lingo that the RDs share. So, this makes being overt really easy. It is almost like I have been covertly collecting all of this information