Exiting the Library
Note: This paper does a good job of describing the advantages and disadvantages of being a complete observer. However, this paper would have been stronger had it included many of the core class concepts (e.g., inductive research, ethnomethodological study, sampling, etc.) where appropriate.
Everyday we are faced with a question: What door should I exit from? It generally is not a question that is asked consciously, but something guides the choices we make. This is especially true in places that provide multiple doors for exiting. The question I chose to investigate was: What rules govern what doors we exit when we are in a public setting faces with a choice of multiple exits?
This topic interested me because I face a set of four doors every day at work. I tend to watch people choose a door, and now decided to see if there was a pattern. The question itself meant I had to observe what doors people exited, and if there was a pattern that would suggest some possible social rules. The question was also limiting in the sense that I could not see whether their choice of doors was influenced by their ultimate destination, or some other unknown mindset. In other words, did they choose the left door because they were heading left, or was it because they came from the left side of the building? These ideas tempted me to change the direction of my observations. In the end I chose to remain in the interior of the building.
The building I made my observations in was the John T. Richardson Library, located on the DePaul University campus. The entrance and the exit of the library are the same four doors. They consist of a set of double doors flanked by two single doors. Directly in front of the doors, as you exit, are swinging bars. There if a set of two in the middle that are designed for entering, and on wither side is a bar you must pass through to exit.
Originally I meant to observe what choice individuals made in exiting in terms of the bar they chose to exit through. Did they choose the left or right side, and did the side of the library they were coming from influence their decision? As I began observing the behaviors of the patrons of the library I noticed that individuals did not follow what I had assumed would be a natural course of events. Before I began observing I assumed that people who used the left exit bar would also exit through the left door, the same being true for the right. I found that this was often not the case, so I expanded my observation to include not only the choice of exit bars, but also the choice of exit door.
The behaviors I observed varied more than I expected them to, but a general pattern emerged. In general, people followed a very natural course. When coming from the left side of the building, they chose to exit through the left bar and door. The same was true for the right side. Another frequent behavior was individuals choosing to exit through the bar and then exiting through the center door. When exiting the building from the circulation desk, which I chose to call the center of the library, people chose to use the right set of exit bar and door more often than the left set. Another behavior was to come form one side of the library and then exit from the opposite side. For example, an individual coming form the left side would exit through the right bar and door. The behavior I never would have expected, but did find, was that of a handful of individuals who came from the left side of the building, used the right bar, and then crossed over to exit through the left door. I also expected to see many people attempting to exit through the entrance bars, but this only occurred once.
The final behavior I noticed was that of people following others. In most cases, when an individual was following another from one side of the building, they followed that individual all the way through the choice of bar and door. This occurred most frequently as people went from the left side and exited through the left set of bar and door, and vice versa.
In terms of methodology, I chose the mode of complete observer. I chose this method because I was interested in the patterns that may emerge. Being a participant in the act of exiting would bring me no insight as to how people generally act as they exit. The behavior is done in silence, so there would be no insights that I could gather from participating. Also, because I had preconceived notions as to how people exited I would not be making a random choice as I exited. It would be done on a conscious level.
I made my observations first in a mostly numerical sense. I counted how many individuals exited the same way. As thought occurred to me as to why they chose the exit they did, I wrote these on a separate sheet of paper. The numbers helped me to discover a pattern, and the written notes helped me to decide why these patterns emerged. Being a complete observer was the right choice for these types of observations because I had no effect on the individuals being watched. There was no reactivity, because the people did not know I was watching them, and therefor their behavior did not change. The negative side to this type of observation is that the findings you will read about next are completely based on my observation. No one was interviewed about the choices they made, so all conclusions are my own.
My conclusion, from the patterns I discovered, is that people exit form the first door they see. My observations showed that a majority of the people exited from the same side of the building they came from. So, for example, an individual coming from the left side of the building is more likely to see the left exit bar first, and then the left exit door, so these are the choices made. I believe that individuals used the center door quite often because they are exiting at an angle, and the center door is the door they see first, even if the bar used is on the left or right side. These rules seem to exist only because of convenience. Subconsciously it is faster and easier to exit through the first door you see. To look at all the options would mean that a conscious effort would have to be made about the choice of exit, and people seem to be in too much of a hurry to do this. The rules of exiting are rules of convenience.
Of course, in the end these rules are my own opinion, and they are based on observations that only apply to the John T. Richardson Library. Anyone else could have made the same observations, but their hypothesis of the social rules may be very different. If this were to be done again I believe that more than one building should be observed, to see if the rules apply in all situations. Also, I would include an observation outside of the building to see if direction after exiting influences a person’s choice of exit. In the end, maybe the only way to know why people behave as they do is to ask them about their actions, and see if a conscious set of social rules exists.