Research Methods

Fieldwork

While fieldwork offers many advantages to researchers, it is not without its challenges and difficulties—some practical and some theoretical—which I summarize below:

Time & Expense
Fieldwork data typically take quite a bit of time and expense to gather. In anthropology, for example, ethnographic studies are not considered substantial unless researchers have spent a minimum of twelve to eighteen months in the culture they are studying. The length of time is necessary to experience a situation for a long enough period to become familiar with people and behaviors, and to see patterns emerge. Because fieldwork allows (and expects) increased interaction with research participants, the time spent in direct contact with people is much greater than is necessary for survey research, for example. The project can also become very expensive not only due to the increased amount of time it takes to perform the research, but also due to the additional logistics, such as transcribing tape recordings of interviews. As Rosalie Wax eloquently states, "It is a horrid but inescapable fact that it usually takes more time to organize, write, and present material well than it takes to gather it." (1983, pp. 193-4)

The flip side is that the data gathered through fieldwork are much richer than data gathered through other methods such as survey research. The data contain the results of direct interactions with subjects such as verbatim transcriptions of speech. This avoids problems such as trying to force non-numeric data into numeric scales or relying on inaccurate data self-reported by the subjects. The greater quantity of data also allows for what Clifford Geertz (1973) calls "thick description" of the situation.

Data Quantity
In addition to the long period of data gathering, the type of data collected are typically more comprehensive and detailed than quantitative data. Researchers can end up with volumes of field notes to go through, hours of tape recordings to transcribe, or pages of text to examine. This is exacerbated by the necessity of gathering as much data as is available, because it is not possible to know with certainty which data will be useful eventually. Howie Becker explains that if researchers:

are conscientious, or experienced enough to know that they had better, they put it all in, even what they think may be useless, and keep on doing that until they know for sure that they will never use data on certain subjects. They thus allow themselves to become aware of things they had not anticipated which may have a bearing on their subject. They expect to continually add variables and ideas to their models. In some ways, that is the essence of the method. (1998)

This extensive amount of data provides its own advantage, however. The more data present for analysis, the more possibility for theory and understanding to emerge from the data. Glaser and Strauss explain that "a grounded theory that is faithful to the everyday realities of a substantive area is one that has been carefully induced from diverse data." (1967, p. 238; see also Strauss and Corbin, 1994)

Close to the Data
In fieldwork, particularly participant observation, researchers are in direct contact with the research subjects. This presents the possibility that researchers can affect the very situation that they are attempting to study. However, the advantages of direct access to the data outweigh the disadvantages of possible researcher influence as summarized by Howie Becker:

"all social scientists, implicitly or explicitly, attribute a point of view and interpretations to the people whose actions we analyze. That is, we always describe how they interpret the events they participate in, so the only question is not whether we should, but how accurately we do it.... the nearer we get to the conditions in which they actually do attribute meanings to objects and events the more accurate our descriptions of those meanings are likely to be.

"... when [ethnographers] talk about what people do they are talking about what they saw them do under the conditions in which they usually do it, rather than making inferences from a more remote indicator such as the answer to a question given in the privacy of a conversation with a stranger. They are seeing the "real world" of everyday life, not some version of it created at their urging and for their benefit, and this version, they think, deserves to be treated as having greater truth value than the potentially less accurate versions produced by other methods, whatever the offsetting advantages of efficiency and decreased expense." (Becker, 1998; see also Blumer, 1969)

At its heart, fieldwork seeks to be scientifically rigorous by rejecting speculation and seeking a more complete understanding by getting closer to the objects of study. (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994)

Personal Relationships
The role of outside researcher entering an unfamiliar culture can be difficult on the level of personal interaction. Researchers worry about being accepted into or respected by the subjects. It is never completely clear whether people are on guard, wondering how they will look in the final write-up, or whether they are being honest in their responses. (Johnson, 1983; Wax 1983) Once researchers feel a part of the culture that they are observing, they worry about breaking the trust that has developed; "the main problem of participant-observation is the violence it does to the love which has motivated and sustained it." (Chernoff, 1979, p. 11)

The closer working relationship of participant-observation allows researchers to have a personal relationship with the people with whom they interact; to see them as human, and not as reductionist elements of some inhuman system, a sentiment echoed by Strauss and Corbin, who explain that "grounded theory methodology incorporates the assumption, shared with other, but not all, social science positions concerning the human status of actors whom we study. They have perspectives on and interpretations of their own and other actors' actions." (1994, p. 280) Furthermore, as Chernoff says, "Participant-observation has become a way to turn the limitations of many standard investigative methods to advantage through the uniqueness of a researcher who uses his [sic] individuality to address social questions. The character of participant-observation thus obliges some sort of personal statement." (1979, p. 20)

Overview | Fieldwork | Objectivity vs. Subjectivity |
My Role as Participant Observer | Description of the Data

Contents | Introduction | Background | Methods | Description | Conclusion | References