Fieldwork

Fieldwork is the hallmark of research for qualitative researchers. It is a tool used to help describe and understand a group or culture. It is guided by practical activity, judgment, interpretation, and description. The method involves working with people in their own communities for long periods of time. Company manners or guest behaviors disappear over time. The typical or normative behavior reemerges and is dominant over extended periods of time.

Fieldworkers are typically participant observers. They participate in the lives of the people they work with, observing and recording what they see and experience firsthand. This participation gives them the advantage of being immersed in the culture long enough to understand it from the insider's perspective and distant enough to objectify patterns of behavior in the community, enabling them to share their insights with other colleagues.

Fieldwork requires systematic observation, interpretation of observed behavior, and a plan of action to follow up on observations. Although an overall research design is mapped out in fieldwork, much of the actual work depends on observations and responses in the field. The fieldworker uses judgment and interpretation at every stage to determine the next steps; for example, what to follow up on to better understand the situation, particularly from a specific role or perspective. Fieldworkers often find new leads or paths while in the field as they learn the right questions to ask. The objective in fieldwork is not to decide who is right and wrong. It is to describe the various, and often conflicting, perspectives and worldviews in a culture or community.

Qualitative researchers record their observations and insights in written documents, emails, digital photographs, and video. The fieldworker uses a variety of methods and techniques to ensure the integrity of the data, ranging from sampling strategies to triangulation (i.e., comparing different forms of data to rule out rival hypotheses). In addition, there is much reliance on the use of verbatim quotations to help tell the story in the community member's own voice. Fieldworkers rely heavily on unobtrusive measures to interpret daily events, including participant's clothing, language, dialect, body piercings and tattoos, graffiti, maps, music, letters, and local newspapers. These measures provide some indication about social status, attitudes, roles, and power. This naturalistic approach avoids excessive filtering, distortion, or bias associated with the researcher's perspective and the artificial response typical of controlled or laboratory conditions. The amount of time devoted to working in the field allows for built-in forms of reliability as the fieldworker observes the same patterns of behavior over time. These methods objectify, standardize, and refine the researcher's insights and perceptions.

The findings or interpretations are typically recorded in fieldnotes. These are often highly personalized records of the day's events. Fieldworkers typically type their notes up each day while they are still fresh and vivid. After fieldworkers have sorted and analyzed the fieldnotes and related data, they share what they have learned with participants in verbal or written form to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of these understandings. Although the focus of fieldwork is to learn about a culture or community, many ethnographers take time to record their own attitudes and behavior to monitor their own behavior and perceptions. Fieldworkers attempt to be unobtrusive and minimize their impact on the community. However, the presence of an engaged human instrument will always have some effect on the people in the community. Fieldwork is always guided by ethical principles and standards, ranging from honesty to reciprocity. These principles protect people's rights, such as the right to privacy, and ensure the viability of qualitative research (by allowing community members to trust fieldworkers enough to continue letting them in their lives). Fieldwork combines rigor with the serendipity of real life experience. The combination contributes to the production of a compelling story in a way that is rigorous and gives voice to the human experience.

...