Qualitative observations occur when researchers take field notes on behaviors and activities of individuals at a certain research site. Field notes include researchers records in unstructured or semi structured ways, and activities at the research site. Qualitative observers engage in roles varying from non-participant to complete participant and observations are open-ended, so researchers ask general questions of participants that allow the participants to freely provide their views. Pachirat did not disclose if he spoke to coworkers or kept to himself, but you could only assume he at least tried to talk to his peers and ask about how they felt about the operations since he was trying to write an expose.

Pachirat completed participant roles by directly going undercover and doing the work that was assigned to him in the slaughterhouse. He hung livers in coolers for over 2 months, participated in an operation that was structured to keep the true amount slaughters hidden from both the public and the workers. He determined experience amongst the workers is limited; out of 800 people, only 7 are exposed to living animals, and 4 are directly involved with the actual killing. While everyone has an idea of what goes on, there is a direct separation from the ‘clean’ side and ‘dirty’ side of operations. While only limited to 3 or 4 jobs himself, Pachirat discovered 121 different jobs going on at once. Once promoted to a quality control position, he was granted access to the kill floor where he saw firsthand cross different zones of the slaughter process. He had no knife skills going into the job, so he was only able to work in the liver hanger for 2 months. After a change in contract occurred at the place, after he learned to do other skills, he was able to change positions rather than be terminated. He experienced working with live cattle, where he witnessed his coworkers abusing the animals with unnecessary pain. He briefly experienced one every 12 seconds shooting the cattle. This is seen as the only job that is morally ‘troublesome’ amongst the workers. He was subject to technicalities of the work conditions, so he saw behind the curtain as well as first-hand watching the treatment of animals. He concluded that a high line operation speed means it is impossible to treat the animals better/more humanely. He witnessed and engaged in many ethically problematic roles like masking what was really going on to the USDA. He said he also incorporated some analytical and theoretical work into the information he collected, but did not disclose exactly what this entailed.

He did not conduct qualitative documents of newspapers official reports or private documents to get research results. nor did he conduct qualitative interviews because he did not create groups where he asked unstructured and opened ended questions in an interview style approach. In qualitative research it is best for researchers to select participants and sites that will best help the researcher understand the problem and the research question. Pachirat chose (A) The setting where the research took place being the slaughterhouse itself, (B) The actors observed being his coworkers and management, (C) The events in what the coworkers and managers were doing and (D) The process in which the events observed were.

Seeing the way operations were conducted based on firsthand observations is most reliable and valid as long as you go into the experiment with an open mind and no preconceived notion that’ll cause bias. With this case, we can only hope that Pachirat did not exaggerate his experiences and did not let personal emotions drive his research focus. Pachirat was smart to do this for the most organic Interviews and surveys can show skewed results. With interviews, bias and fear of repercussions can make for unreliable results. With surveys, if they are too long, someone may get annoyed and rush through the questionnaire. If it is too short, then we can’t accurately measure the results.