oa De geobserveerde onderzoeker

The observed researcher: opportunities and challenges for observational research among corporate investigators

This contribution discusses observational research within the context of corporate investigations. Corporate investigators are themselves keen observers of human behavior, and as such, observation of these professionals results in an interesting researcher-participant dynamic. By playing with (assumed and ascribed) roles, much information can be gathered about the daily reality of corporate investigators and how they experience this. Building trust is both essential and challenging because of professional skepticism, however, once trust was established, participants actively contributed to the research. By assuming ignorance or, conversely, knowledge in a dynamic manner, the researcher was able to make use of the roles ascribed to her based on age, gender and education level.