Frequently, a naturalistic observation is designed to answer specific ques- tions. Yepez (1994), for example, wanted to investigate whether teachers of English as a Second Language courses gave equal amounts of attention to their male and female students. With permission of the teachers (but without explaining her hypothesis beforehand), Yepez observed and recorded the num- ber of classroom interactions between four different teachers and their pupils. Each teacher was observed six times. Years of past research have shown that gender inequities are often found in the classroom. Male students tend to be given more attention by teachers. Surprisingly, in Yepez's observation, she found that only one of the four teachers seemed to give more attention to the men than to the women.