Field Research

10 Key excerpts on "Field Research"

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  eBook - ePub

  The How To of Qualitative Research

  • Janice D. Aurini, Melanie Heath, Stephanie Howells(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  7 How to Conduct Field Research Getting In and Getting Out with High-Quality Data

  Learning objectives

  By the end of this chapter you will have the tools to:

  • Conceptualize strategies for entering the
    field
    and negotiating roles
  • Identify the right time to exit the field
  • Make meaningful observations and write
    field notes

  Chapter summary

  This chapter builds on Chapters 2 , 3 , and 4 and provides the steps for conducting Field Research. Field Research is a form of qualitative data collection based on understanding, observing and interacting with people in a setting (or ‘field’). The ‘field’ can include a physical space, such as a neighbourhood, but it can also include an online environment. The type of data that emerges from the field includes field notes documenting conversations, interactions, and organizational processes, and photos, videos, or other physical and social traces.

  Introduction

  It seemed as if the academic world had imposed a conspiracy of silence regarding the personal experiences of field workers. In most cases, the authors who had given any attention to their research methods had provided fragmentary information or had written what appeared to be a statement of the methods the field worker would have used if he had known what he was going to come out with when he entered the field. It was impossible to find realistic accounts that revealed the errors and confusions and the personal involvement that a field worker must experience. (Whyte, 1943/1993, p. 358)

  Fieldwork is an applied method that usually requires getting your ‘hands dirty’. It emphasizes collecting data first hand over a long period of time; this can include observing, having unstructured and/or formal conversations (e.g. interviews), analysing ‘artefacts’ (e.g. webpages), and even becoming a full participant in the activities of the group or organization. Getting into the

  field

  and observing people’s behaviour, actions and interactions, and their social world involves some of the most complex planning and negotiation in qualitative methodologies. The above words of William Foot Whyte capture the messiness of Field Research that often requires substantial revisions of the research design. Regardless of the theoretical approach (e.g.

  ethnography

  ,

  symbolic interactionism

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  eBook - ePub

  Field Research

  A Sourcebook and Field Manual

  • Robert G. Burgess(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This is the situation for anthropologists studying other cultures and for sociologists studying their own society. The social and cultural diversity that exists within any society means that the researcher has to learn a language and establish a role. The Field Researcher is, therefore, an outsider; a stranger who lives among the people for the purposes of study (Srinivas, 1979).

  The method of social investigation that is most often referred to in Field Research is participant observation which allows the researcher to work with individuals in their natural settings. However, this emphasis upon observational techniques is somewhat narrow as Field Researchers may complement their observations by conversations, informal/unstructured interviews, formal interviews, by surveys and by collecting personal documents (written, oral and photographic evidence). These methods can be used in different combinations depending on the focus of the social investigation and the strategies that need to be adopted. Indeed, Schatzman and Strauss (1973) consider that the strategies used in Field Research depend upon the questions posed with the result that the Field Researcher becomes a methodological strategist who engages in problem oriented methodology. For them:

  Field method is not an exclusive method in the same sense, say that experimentation is. Field method is more like an umbrella of activity beneath which any technique may be used for gaining the desired information, and for processes of thinking about this information. (Schatzman and Strauss, 1973, p. 14)

  Field Research involves the activities of the researcher, the influence of the researcher on the researched, the practices and procedures of doing research and the methods of data collection and data analysis. However, various writers have emphasised different aspects of Field Research; a situation that may be attributed to the trends and developments that have taken place in this area of study.

  Some Major Approaches to Field Research

  The origins of Field Research have been identified by Wax (1971) and by Douglas (1976) in the fifth century BC, when ‘on the spot’ reports were provided of foreign peoples and of the Peloponnesian wars. Wax traces developments in descriptive reporting among the Romans and the traders and ambassadors of the Islamic empires. She considers that the first Europeans to report ethnographic data were missionaries of the Catholic Church and travellers and merchants. However, she maintains that it is essential to look at developments that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when field reports began to be used in academic study.

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  Qualitative Analysis for Planning & Policy

  Beyond the Numbers

  • John Gaber(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2

  Field Research

  What Is Field Research?

  Field Research is the process of learning about a community, neighborhood, or environs through first-hand observations. Field Research requires the investigator to have a purposeful strategy before going out to the study site. It is common practice for the planner to systematically record insights and observations in field notes.

  Why Do Planners Need Field Research?

  You will need to conduct Field Research when you do not have access to enough data about a particular community, place, or activity in order to make an informed planning decision. Planners choose Field Research strategies to obtain data that are context-specific. This method assumes that the specific problems planners research are embedded in a larger system of “interrelated parts,” [1 ] and that by researching the larger context, the planner gains a better understanding of the problem. The researcher tries to capture a holistic, “big-picture” perspective that integrates what people say and do within the context of larger social, economic, physical, environmental, and political factors.

  Field Research investigations can obtain both quantitative and qualitative data slices. An example of quantitative Field Research would be a manual vehicle count to determine traffic flow; qualitative research would generate thick descriptions of what drivers did when they got stuck in traffic. Cost is another reason for Field Research. Sometimes it is easier, less expensive, and less time-consuming for a planner to get first-hand observations than to apply other research approaches. Research strategies like focus groups, surveys, and photographic research require more time to set up and implement and some investment in equipment, while Field Research can be as simple as a planner visiting the research site a handful of times, sitting on a park bench, and witnessing life unfolding before her very eyes. Herbert Gans describes the simplicity of Field Research like this: “It takes time, some paper, pencils, and shoe leather, but if necessary, it can be done by one person—without a research grant.” [2

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  eBook - ePub

  The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection

  • Uwe Flick, Uwe Flick, Author(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Field settings and sample populations (see Schreier, Chapter 6, this volume) may be systematically identified in the process of designing a study, but it does not then follow that accessing those settings and recruiting from particular sample populations will in practice be a systematic process (Turner and Almack, 2016). Researchers often find themselves unprepared for the situated practical challenges and ethical dilemmas they encounter in the field and the manoeuvres and tactics they sometimes need to employ in order to gain access to a fieldwork setting, implement a research design and collect data (Cunliffe and Alcadipani da Silveira, 2016; Calvey, 2008). Research is often represented as a linear procedure with a distinct beginning, middle and end, but in practice it is a more complex social process, which is shaped through the interactions between the researcher and researched (Doykos et al., 2014). This complex process can pose many challenges, but can be particularly exacting in fieldwork settings where groups and individuals who are identified as potential research participants are reluctant to engage with a research project (Groger et al., 1999; Doykos et al., 2014), or actively resist researchers’ attempts to recruit them (Bengry-Howell and Griffin, 2011).

  The concept of ‘the field’ is used extensively across the social sciences to denote a ‘naturalistic’ research setting, in contrast with more controlled laboratory or library settings where research might be conducted (McCall, 2006). As a methodological setting the field has been under-theorised, outside of literature concerned with ethnography (see Buscatto, Chapter 21, this volume) and the Fieldwork Tradition, wherein researchers are, to differing degrees, situated as participant observers within the fieldwork settings under study (McCall, 2006). The Fieldwork Tradition

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  Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology

  A Text and Reader

  • Christine Tartaro(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Field Research

  One of the criticisms of survey research is that it can be weak on validity since we are asking people about what they did in the past or what they would do in a hypothetical situation. Numerous factors impact the accuracy of the answers we will receive, including honesty, quality of one’s memory, and concerns about social desirability. Trust in the researcher may be another consideration, as we often ask people in criminal justice to self-report sensitive matters, some of which even involve illegal behavior. We might be able to get a better, more complete understanding of individuals’ circumstances and their behavior though Field Research. Not only is Field Research beneficial when we want to learn about people and group behavior, but it can also help us learn about the environment. Going out into the field allows us to see the layout of neighborhoods and streets and learn about how physical characteristics of spaces can make them more or less attractive to potential offenders.

  This chapter covers Field Research, which addresses a wide range of data collection activities. Field Research includes no-contact activities in which researchers are making note of buildings, traffic patterns, and landscaping, as well as observations of people who are unaware they are being monitored. At the other end of the spectrum, fieldwork can involve some of the most extensive contact between researchers and participants, with researchers spending weeks, months, and even years immersing themselves in a group’s culture. In between these two extremes are depth interviews, focus groups, and in-person survey dissemination, topics that were addressed in previous chapters. In this chapter, I will focus on two types of Field Research—participant observation and structured field observations.

  Roles for Field Researchers

  Gold (1958) discussed four different roles for researchers operating in the field (Figure 10.1 ). The extent of researcher interactions with informants varies a great deal in each of these. First, there is the complete observer who has no contact at all with research participants, and participants might not even notice that they are being observed. A complete observer might sit on a park bench near a picnic area and take note of the number of people who use the available trash cans to dispose of their trash, how many pack up and take their waste away with them, and how many leave their litter in the park. The next type of Field Researcher is the observer as participant

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  The SAGE Handbook of Fieldwork

  • Dick Hobbs, Richard Wright, Dick Hobbs, Richard Wright(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  WHAT IS FIELDWORK? In the research community generally, fieldwork refers to primary research that transpires ‘in the field’ – that is, outside the controlled settings of the library or labora-tory. The importance of field studies in a wide range of disciplines, like geology or botany or the social sciences, is quite evident. Of course, the methods of Field Research (McCall, 1978) frequently do, and should, include ‘field experiments’. Does applying fer-tilizer to a prairie increase the number of insects? Does street lighting reduce crime? Yet, in virtually every discipline, field meth-ods lean very heavily toward the non-experi-mental – toward observational studies, in the statistical sense of that phrase. Much of that work employs ‘systematic field observation’ (McCall, 1984); for example, the number of plant species occurring in a square meter may be empirically ascertained, as might the fre-quency of expressions of disagreement within a troubled marital pair. Many other field stud-ies employ a more naturalistic, more open-ended style of observation that emphasizes discovery or pattern recognition; for instance, a field botanist might come to see that her observations can be usefully summarized by the concept of brousse tigrée .A second meaning of ‘fieldwork’, then, has reference to the period of preliminary work and/or of data collection that does take place in a field setting, as dis-tinguished from other phases of those same studies (such as design, analysis, write-up) that take place in more conventional and researcher-controlled settings. For instance, an old-fashioned face-to-face survey study would exhibit a period of fieldwork, and even the decennial census by mailed questionnaire involves a period of fieldwork in which block maps are constructed and updated. A third and key meaning of ‘fieldwork’ is peculiar to the social sciences, such as sociol-ogy and anthropology.

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  Advanced Research Methods for the Social and Behavioral Sciences

  • John E. Edlund, Austin Lee Nichols(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  4.9 Conclusion Human behavior is fascinating and complex. Field Research allows social and behavioral scientists to observe and participate in social action with an eye to explaining how and why people behave as they do. Fieldwork can be exciting, but it can also be time-consuming, emotionally and physically draining, and unpredictable. Fieldworkers must use all of their senses, documenting in rich detail in fieldnotes what they see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, as well as what they feel and per- ceive in the field. They must check their per- ceptions and interpretations by gathering more data and asking questions of those in the field. We write ourselves into the research because our presence shapes the data we collect and our training, interests, and background influ- ence the orientations we hold and the inter- pretations we draw. This imbrication means researchers must be very thoughtful about the choices they make in and out of the field. Field Researchers must also be prepared to encounter and deal with the many complex ethical conundrums that accompany observ- ing and participating in the lives of others. We build ideas about what we think is going on through reading and coding our fieldnotes and through the practice of writing notes-on- notes and analytic memos. Finally, we develop a written account that brings readers into the setting(s) we have studied and offers an explanation for an aspect of social life and human behavior. Field Research is intense and demanding, but highly rewarding. More- over, done carefully and thoughtfully, it is a powerful method for advancing understanding of the social world. ´ KEY TAKEAWAYS • Cultivate strong recall and descriptive writing skills. • Pay attention to and document one’s reactions and social location in the field. • Capture detailed descriptions of settings, actions, and interactions and broader observations and reflections about what is happening in the field. Key Takeaways 65

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  In the Field

  An Introduction to Field Research

  • Robert G. Burgess(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4Methods of Field Research 1: Participant Observation

  In commenting upon the object of social scientific research Schutz (1954) makes a distinction between the physical reality described by the natural scientist and the social reality described by the social scientist when he writes:

  There is an essential difference in the structure of the thought objects of mental constructs formed by the social sciences and those formed by the natural sciences. It is up to the natural scientist and to him alone to define, in accordance with the procedural rules of his science, his observational field, and to determine the facts, data, and events within it which are relevant to his problems or scientific purposes at hand. Neither are those facts and events pre-selected, nor is the observational field pre-interpreted. The world of nature, as explored by the natural scientist, does not ‘mean’ anything to the molecules, atoms, and electrons therein. The observational field of the social scientist, however, namely the social reality, has a specific meaning and relevance structure for the human beings living, acting, and thinking therein. By a series of commonsense constructs they have pre-selected and pre-interpreted this world which they experience as the reality of their daily lives. It is these thought objects of theirs which determine their behaviour by motivating it. The thought objects constructed by the social scientist, in order to grasp this social reality, have to be founded upon the thought objects constructed by the commonsense thinking of men, living their daily life within their social world. (Schutz, 1954, pp. 266–7)

  Such a perspective suggests that the social world is not objective but involves subjective meanings and experiences that are constructed by participants in social situations. Accordingly, it is the task of the social scientist to interpret the meanings and experiences of social actors, a task that can only be achieved through participation with the individuals involved.

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  Epistemology, Fieldwork, and Anthropology

  • Kenneth A. Loparo, Antoinette Tidjani Alou, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  18 Owing to observation, preliminary problematics may be mod- ified, discarded, or expanded. Fieldwork is not simply the coloring in E p i s t e m o l o g y, F i e l d w o r k , a n d A n t h r o p o l o g y 28 of a ready-made drawing. It implies subjecting preconceived curiosity to the test of reality. The competence of the Field Researcher consists in his ability to observe the unexpected (although the prevailing ten- dency is usually the discovery of the expected) and in his ability to produce data that impose an alteration of his own hypotheses. Field inquiry must attempt to contradict the Bambara proverb from Mali, according to which “a stranger sees only what he already knows.” Impregnation But the daily life (whether social, professional, familial, associative, or religious) in which the researcher participates, in one way or another, is not simply a fertile site supplying the sequences needed to produce corpuses and fill up notebooks. The researcher is in fact continuously involved in a range of interac- tions. Far from being a mere eyewitness, he continuously engages in simple or complex, verbal or nonverbal social relations: discussions, chitchatting, games, etiquette, solicitations, etc. The anthropologist operates within the realm of ordinary communication; “he adopts the forms of ordinary dialogue” (Althabe, 1990: 126); he encounters local actors in day-to-day situations, in the world of their “natural attitude,” as noted by Schutz (1987). But many of the everyday con- versations and activities in which the anthropologist participates are directly or indirectly related to his professional curiosity, i.e., to his research topic. Hence, many local discursive interactions that occur in his presence are ones in which the researcher is involved minimally or not at all. The researcher is a voyeur as well as an eavesdropper.

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  Mobile User Research

  A Practical Guide

  • Sunny Consolvo, Frank R. Bentley, Eric B. Hekler, Sayali S. Phatak(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Springer

    (Publisher)

  This became especially important as computing moved away from fixed desktop computers to portable and mobile devices that can be used in a wider variety of contexts. Mobile user research, almost by definition, requires studying technology in everyday contexts of use (and not just in the lab). 3.2.1 FIELD STUDY TIPS Planning a study that involves locations in the field is not difficult, but it does involve advanced planning. If you have a method including some sort of longitudinal data collection (such as the diary studies described in Chapter 4), field visits are best conducted at the start of a study, often as part of the initial interview, so that you can use what you learn from the visit to help interpret the data that you might gain through other study components, such as diaries or usage logs (discussed in Chapter 2). When planning your study, think about your research questions and the types of places 3.2 EXPLORATORY FIELD STUDIES 44 3. OBSERVATIONS IN THE FIELD AND IN THE LAB that are most important to see. For example, if you are studying how people communicate, make sure to ask about recent places where participants have placed phone calls, video chats, or written letters. If you are interested in music use, ask to see all of the speakers in the home, or places where they might sit and listen to music through headphones. In this case, you might also want to see their car, where they exercise, or other venues where they like to listen to music. Make a list of these places and the questions you’d like to explore in each location. Often, the best questions simply consist of asking the participant to tell you the story of the last time they performed the task that you are interested in while you’re together with them in the place they performed that task. Be sure to ask follow-up questions to get the relevant details of these occurrences.

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