IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS, VOL. 22, NO. 5, SEPTEMBERIOCTOBER 1792 983 How to Apply the Anthropological Technique of Participant Observation to Knowledge Acquisition for Expert Systems Mary A. Meyer Abstract-Participant observation requires that the researcher (interviewing), having the individual think aloud while per- not only observes but participates in the activities of those forming a particular task (verbal reports’), and/or observing persons being studied. The paper describes and illustrates how the individual’s behavior. the anthropological method of participant observation can be used in manual knowledge acquisition to: 1) familiarize the Participant observation relates to the aspects of knowledge knowledge engineer with the domain prior to interviews of the acquisition concerned with gathering information from human experts or users; 2) obtain information about the experts’ or sources-experts and users. The performance of participant users’ unconscious behaviors; 3) learn the experts’ or users’ observation is likely to overlap with the other techniques for views of themselves and their actions; 4) investigate the social gathering information from experts and users. For instance, processes by which expertise is developed and supported; and 5) aid the knowledge engineer’s construction of personal models of participant observation places researchers in a face-to-face the events and objects in the domain. Participant observation is situation with the experts/users, thereby giving the researcher compared to similar, more commonly used knowledge acquisi- ideas for future interview questions or for testing by other tion techniques, such as apprenticeship learning. Suggestions are methods. given on how to use participant observation within knowledge I propose that participant observation can serve the follow- engineering projects. ing five purposes: 1) to familiarize knowledge engineers with the domain as I. INTRODUCTION a first step prior to any elicitations; N PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION, the researcher is not a 2) to obtain information on the experts’ and users’ behav- I detached observer but a participant in the activities of those iors that cannot be reliably obtained through interviews; being studied. In cultural anthropology, participant observation 3) to place knowledge engineers in a position to hear the is defined as a experts’ or users’ views of themselves, their own, and others’ actions; field method whereby the ethnographer is immersed 4) to investigate the social processes by which expertise is in the day-to-day activities of the community being developed and supported; and studied . The objective of this method is to minimize 5) to aid knowledge engineers in constructing personal the presence of the field worker as a factor affecting models of the events and objects in the domain. the responses of the people and to provide a record of observed behavior under varying conditions [ 11. Recently anthropological approaches have been proposed for use in knowledge acquisition [2], [3]. Forsythe and I believe that participant observation is a valuable strat- Buchanan [3] reason that anthropological techniques are egy for knowledge acquisition, defined here as the acquiring applicable because of the overlap between the goals of artificial and modeling of appropriate problem solving knowledge for intelligence and anthropology. Both fields seek to investigate the purpose of building expert or knowledge-based systems. “how human beings understand, organize, process and make Knowledge acquisition usually involves the following pro- use of symbolic information” and rely on the same basic data cesses: gathering knowledge from human or textual sources gathering methods-interviews with individuals, text analysis, (books, reports, data bases, case studies, and empirical data); and observations. They note that anthropology, because of interpreting, modeling, and analyzing this information; and its longer history and extensive literature on its methods, representing it in a machine-readable form that can be entered has much to offer the subfield of knowledge acquisition. into the system. Human sources may include experts whose In particular, they consider participant observation a valid problem-solving knowledge is being elicited or potential users technique for knowledge engineering. of the system whose needs and patterns of interaction with This paper is organized as follows. In Section 11, I present the computer are being determined. With humans, knowl- background information on participant observation: the history edge acquisition usually involves some type of questioning of its practice in cultural anthropology, the type of thinking that it involves, and a comparison of it to other related knowledge Manuscript received June 17, 1991; revised February 21, 1992. M. A. Meyer is with the Statistics Group, MS F600, at the Los Alamos acquisition techniques. In Section 111, I give examples of the National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545. IEEE Log Number 9201397. As described in Ericsson and Simon [30]. U.S. Government work not protected by US. Copyright 984 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS, VOL. 22, NO. 5, SEPTEMBERIOCTOBER 1992 application of participant observation to the five proposed the observed. Connected knowing is a way of thinking based goals. In Section IV, I describe some of the assumptions about on empathy. In connected knowing, the researcher “ . uses knowledge that are implicit in participant observation and offer him or herself as a tool for the investigation. The researchers guidance on the use of participant observation in knowledge [6] use their reactions to understand others’ view and to acquisition. Section IV is a summary. formulate hypotheses about the other participant’s reactions.” In this sense, participant observation is a kind of “disciplined 11. BACKGROUND subjectivity” [ 61. A. History of Participant Observation in Anthropology C. Relation of Participant Observation to Other KA Practices and Techniques The development of participant observation is formally credited to Brownislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist, Participant observation resembles two techniques commonly who began his field studies in the early 1900’s [l]. He used in knowledge acquisihion-on-site observation and ap- and other pioneering anthropologists initiated the practice of prenticeship learningteachback interviews. On-site observa- residing in the community of study for extended periods of tion is described as watching the expert solve real prob- time. These anthropologists went beyond relying on second- lems on the job [7]. Thus, on-site observation differs from hand, and usually erroneous reports of the people from traders participant observation in that passive observations do not and missionaries by actually living with the natives and involve participation or systematic empathizing. For example, observing them. in conducting on-site observations of experts, the knowledge Participant observation has traditionally been seen as means engineer would merely watch detachedly in the background; of improving rapport with those being studied [4].In addition, whereas in participant observation, the knowledge engineer anthropologists have found that participant observation has would, at least, mentally and, usually physically, put himself or frequently stimulated them to generate hypotheses which could herself in the place of the expert (e.g., performing the activities then be examined through the use of more structured methods, that the expert did). Thus, in doing participant observation, as such as interviewing and tests. For example, after conducting opposed to passive observation, the knowledge engineers have participant observation, the researcher might hypothesize that the input of their own responses as a participant in forming members of one group exhibited one behavior and those of hypotheses. another, a slightly different behavior in the same situation. Apprenticeship learning or teachback interviews [8] involve Crane and Agrosino [5] argue that participant observation learning from one expert at a time and having the knowledge is not so much a technique as a state of mind.= By this they engineers demonstrate their understanding by solving a prob- mean that one does not do participant observation in the lem. In contrast, participant observation commonly involves sense that one does a kinship chart or opinion survey. Instead, learning from multiple experts’ interactions, some of which participant observation is more a framework for living in the may not be directed toward problem solving so much as field. Direct experience of others’ way of life is viewed by building expertise (e.g., through arguments among experts). many anthropologists as the most effective way of reducing I consider apprenticeship learning or teachback interviews to one’s natural ethnocentric biases. A researcher’s ethnocentrism be a subvariety of participant observation. Indeed, participant arises from being raised in a society that possesses particular observation has been defined as “when the knowledge engineer ethical, social, work, religious, and sanitary values. Ethnocen- becomes an apprentice or otherwise participates in the expert’s trism results from the researcher seeing things in terms of the problem solving” [SI. culture of which he or she is a product and therefore tends to In anthropology, participant observation usually is combined view as superior, or at least acceptable. with more analytical and