espanolEl presente articulo de reflexion presenta los resultados obtenidos de la investigacion documental sobre observatorios sociales. Se realizo una busquedaen bases de datos, de articulos relacionados con el tema, publicados en los ultimos 5 anos (2009 a 2013), abordando 19 articulos a partir de los cuales se definieron cinco criterios para la lectura de cada documento: finalidad, focalizacion, tema, problematicas y metodos, con el fin de identificar categorias que caracterizan a un observatorio social, quienes intervienen, que temas se trabajan, cuales son losfenomenos que se presentan y como se genera el desarrollo de un observatorio. EnglishThis reflection paper presents results from a doc-umentary research which was carried out on so-cial observatories. The above mentioned research was develop by using databases related to social subjects which have been published in the last five years, 2009-2013 by covering 19 articles, on other hand five principles were defined in order to analyze each document: Purposes, subjects, issues and methodologies, it allowed to identify categories that characterize social observatories, participants, subjects, phenomena as well as de-veloping processes at social observatories are originated.