Communication, Statistics, Communication & Media Studies, Research 

Naturalistic methods provide a research strategy that is phenomenon-centered and tends to place minimal restrictions on the behavior of subjects, so that freely-chosen, spontaneous acts are the substance of the data obtained. Controls are built in, but only to the extent that is necessary to produce standardized procedures and meaningful order in the observations. The time is ripe for the development and dissemination of naturalistic methods for studying social interaction. The editor and authors intend this volume of New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science to serve such a function. Our tactic will be to acquaint readers both with technique and with a sense of the richness of knowledge than can be acquired. Each chapter describes a naturalistic method that has already borne theoretical fruit for the researcher and gives examples of these results. - from Amzon