Ethnographic_fieldwork
Preparation for Field Visit
Time:
Objectives:
By the end of the field visit and follow-up period to write fieldnotes, participants should
- understand what is involved in ‘participating in order to write’ and how this differs from everyday life
- have experience of writing quick ‘head notes’ to use as memory jogs for writing fieldnotes
- have begun to apply the lessons from the previous session about what kinds of things to record and how to record them
- have begun to reflect on the choices they have made in their writing styles
- be ready to contribute to a discussion of their own and other people’s fieldnotes.
Process:
It is not always easy to think of an appropriate setting in which course participants can be asked to carry out a short observational exercise. If you are running this course on a ‘one day per week’ basis, there would be time to ask participants to select their own site, arrange entry, deal with issues of consent and so on. In a course run over 6-8 consecutive days, it may be unreasonable to ask the participants to set this up. If the facilitators do have access to a site where these minimal requirements can be met, this can be considered. An alternative option is to use an initial visit to the place where research is planned, and to get course participants to write up what they have observed and heard in the visit.
Otherwise, the site for practice observational work must be one where public access is unrestricted, and yet course participants can do more than just observe people from a distance. Ideally, it should be possible to hear conversations, to speak to people at the site without unduly misleading them as to your purposes, and to find a range of activities to observe. There are two options we have used:
- Ask all participants to visit a similar kind of setting, not necessarily the same examples. Two relatively successful sites we have used have been busy up-market shopping centres, and local temples. This helps with the feedback session, since all participants can be given the same orientation and research question. See an example handout for the shopping-centre fieldwork task here.
- Allow participants to use their own initiative and select a site they have access to for personal reasons. The advantage of this is that it allows participants to fit the observational exercise into what may be busy personal lives, and makes it more likely that they will have to report on conversations they have been part of. The disadvantage is that you may find it hard to come up with sensible common research questions. Participants often do not realise (until after the event) how different ‘observing in order to write’ is from carrying out one’s routine daily lives – but this is a good lesson to learn!
In either case, participants need clear instructions about what to do, whether you want them to take notes at the time, how long they should spend at the site, and so on. The handout explaining the task should be adapted to suit your own purposes before being given out, or used as part of a PowerPoint presentation to explain the task.
Background material, for adaptation according to your own circumstances as handouts or overhead slides, or just as examples for your own information:
Singal, N., and Jeffery, R. (2008). Qualitative Research Skills Workshop: A Facilitator's Reference Manual, http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/RECOUP, Cambridge: RECOUP (Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty, http://recoup.educ.cam.ac.uk/). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. (original page)
