As far as descriptive research goes, naturalistic observation should provide the truest results based on how that observation is conducted compared to the others such as laboratory observation, case studies, and surveying. Naturalistic observation has the huge advantage of gathering information from people in their natural settings; you are able to watch people’s real behavior for research.

Throughout high school I used to lifeguard at our city pool. In the beginning of each summer we would run some tests on the new swimmers who signed up for swim lessons.  Our goal was to separate the swimmers not by age but by ability. Since the population we observed was usually a group of younger kids ranging from 5-8 years old, we would observe how they swam with just the instructor there compared to swimming with the rest of the group with only the lifeguards watching.  One of the major disadvantages of naturalistic observation is that if people know they are being watched, they will change their behavior. So, by putting kids in the natural setting (the pool with the other kids in their age group with the lifeguard watching like normal) versus having the swimmer swim for the instructor (swim in front of someone they know is testing them for swim lessons), we were able to see their true abilities.

Our results consistently showed that without the pressure of the instructor watching them swim, they performed much better in a natural setting with their peers in front of the lifeguard as they normally would in the pool. If we would have solely went off the results of their swimming performance in front of the instructor, we wouldn’t have been able to split up the swimmers as much as we would have liked to based on ability. This goes to show that compared to laboratory observation, naturalistic observation provides the better result because it is based on someone’s normal behavior.