Ed raises a good point about people's accounts of what things mean, and I do agree with him on this. It's one of the reasons I think that interviews alone are often inadequate. You need both observations of behavior *and* discussions with people about their behavior. When I ask people what things mean to them, it doesn't mean that I leave the analysis up to them. It just means that I include their own accounts. Sometimes these accounts tell us more about what people think *should* matter than about what *does* matter. As for people behaving differently when observed: Sure, although not as much as my students believe. (Many, if not most, of my students also believe that everybody lies on surveys and that no one will tell you the truth in interviews either. Do other people get these reactions, or do I have the most cynical students on the planet?) You will find out one set of things when you covertly observe people. You may find out another set of things when you overtly observe people. Which of those sets of things is more valuable for your research depends on what you're analyzing, but in general, I think you get more information by researching overtly. A lot of it comes down to how you do your analysis. In that analysis, you have to take account of your position as researcher and how that has affected what you've observed, regardless of whether your observation was known or not. Lori