limitations
The research had some limitations tied to the observation methodology used. Since one is supposed to observe the participants that are unaware, it is not easy to monitor the movement of all the participants at once in the whole library. Besides, it needs a lot of concentration, and this can be challenging to pay attention to all details. The exercise can lead to fatigue as one sits for a very long time at a place, which again leads to monotony. Also, to mention, there are physical barriers that obstruct the researcher, making one fail to capture essential details in the study. During the coding process, difficulties are there since the subjects observed exhibit behaviours that were not anticipated during the planning, such as some students eating in the library and holding group discussions in places designed for individual reading.
The coding system used to record the data was simple and straightforward. For instance, different activities exhibited by students in the library were assigned to codes or only abbreviations for easement of the process. To avoid confusion in using the chosen codes, a key needs to provided that illustrates the meaning or the activity each code used represents. Making a phone call, in an area designated for silent reading, was given a simple code or a number. The number or the code was then tallied in a table to indicate the number of times such activity was exhibited in the library to depict the frequency of the behaviour among the students. Thus, the coding system used is simple to understand by anyone else who was not even there during the actual observation or recording.