How to reference observational evidence? Talking about work practices at a business, and hearing first hand from the manager how the employees conduct their work - how can I reference this anecdotal evidence in an academic paper? Alternatively, I could discount the anecdotal evidence and instead conduct an analysis of the work environment myself (i.e. looking at how the work environment operates) - but then I am left in the position of referencing myself! Please advise.
One idea is that you can perform some formal or informal interviews with parties involved in the subject of your research / interest. This is pretty much a standard research method for qualitative studies. Then, you can reference those interviews in a traditional way (in accordance with your preferred publication style guide), in addition to placing them in one of appendices of your paper as well as summarizing and analyzing the facts toward discovering some patterns or other findings.