Systematic Social Observation

In Sociology, Environmental Psychology and Healthy Environmental Studies

Abstract

This paper is a review on systematic social observation. First, systematic social observation in sociology, established by Reiss, is introduced, and some methodological issues, pros, and cons of it are described. Then, in comparison with systematic observation in sociology, this method in environmental psychology is discussed. The discussion above points out that mainly because of its huge cost in time and budget, systematic social observation has rarely been adopted except for some sociology and environmental psychology studies. Next, the rapid expansion of usage of systematic social observation to assess the neighborhoods in the health environment studies because of the recent recognition of the importance of active living that permits and facilitates daily activity is noted. In addition, the expansion of feasibility of automated systematic social observation caused by growing accessibility to open landscape images and advancing machine learning is mentioned. As a closing statement, we refer to an expected role of environmental psychologists and social scientists in the broad sense, in the future systematic social observation research.