What I recommend to my class are:
• Adler, Patricia A., and Peter Adler. Membership Roles in Field Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987. Adler and Adler’s classic monograph describes three types of participant observation roles for researchers in field settings.
• DeWalt, Kathleen M., and Billie R. DeWalt. Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002. This title is geared toward anthropological studies; the text reviews detailed methods for taking fieldnotes and interviewing participants; includes an excellent chapter on data analysis.
• Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. This classic is a superior overview of the fieldnote-taking process and how it springboards to qualitative analysis and the write-up of the study.
• Spradley, James P. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. The analytic methods profiled in this classic work are exclusively Spradley’s, but several of them have become “standard” to several methodologists.