1. This paper grew out of my experience in the research reported in Howard S. Becker , Blanche Geer , Everett C. Hughes , and Anselm L. Strauss (1961) Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I worked out the basic approach in partnership with Blanche Geer and we then applied it in writing up our study of medical education and in the research reported in Becker, Geer and Hughes (1968) Making the Grade: The Academic Side of College Life . New York: John Wiley and Sons. Our own experience has been largely with the role Gold terms ‘participant as observer’, but the methods discussed here should be relevant to other field situations. Cf. Raymond L. Gold. ‘Roles in sociological field observations’, Social Forces, 36 (March 1958), 217–223.