Field Notes

Field notes, which are based on observation in one’s research setting, allow researchers to see and record, firsthand, the activities in which research participants are engaged in the contexts of these activities. Observation is often used as a method of data triangulation—meaning the use of multiple data sources to achieve a range of contextual data—because the validity of self-reporting (such as in interviews and focus groups) often comes into question; therefore, observational field notes—how observations become data—validate information garnered from focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, and other methods of data collection. This entry examines three basic types of field notes, the importance of and skills required for recording field notes, and the sequential process of writing field notes.

Depending on a study’s specific methodological frame and how it approaches field notes as part of a broader data set, field notes generated by observation can be descriptive, inferential, and/or evaluative. In descriptive field notes, researchers observe and describe what has been observed as neutrally as possible. This can be confusing (and misleading) because often what seems objective is in fact inference, so researchers must pay attention to their interpretive filters. Inferential field notes require that researchers understand that they are making inferences—interpretations and assumptions that extend beyond the data—about what is observed and the underlying motives, affect, and/or emotions of the events and behaviors observed. Evaluative field notes mean that researchers are consciously making inferences and judgments about the nature and motives of the behaviors or events observed. Understanding these various approaches to field notes, with a focus on the goals, roles, and differences between them, is vital. Broadly, field notes include descriptive as well as inferential data. Although it is important to acknowledge the differences between these, the lines can be blurry, especially between description and inference. This makes systematic and structured reflexive engagement with field note data crucial for validity.

It is vital to understand that without recording observation through writing, there are no data. This is why observation and field notes are considered to be one method because it is essential to record observations through the careful and systematic process of writing field notes. There are many approaches to field note writing, with varying reasons and processes that relate to each choice. As Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw make clear in their book Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2011), writing field notes requires that a researcher develops specific skills, including the following:

• 1.
  moving from theory (or a problem statement) to what is in focus/observed;
• 2.
  understanding the theoretical construction of the study’s focus and guiding questions;
• 3.
  learning to engage in a disciplined way to what one sees and hears and taking detailed notes while in the setting;
• 4.
  capturing social interactions in words (i.e., observing and writing about the order or sequences of action);
• 5.
  learning to write an analysis that is conscious of stylistic and representational choices; and
• 6.
  seeking the perspectives, language, and indigenous concepts of insiders in the setting.

There is a sequential process of writing field notes, starting with in-the-field “jottings,” which are contemporaneously written while at the research site. These jottings are turned into broader, more coherent written accounts of what is observed as the researcher turns them from jottings into field notes after leaving the field. The “real-time jottings” are an essential grounding and resource for writing the fuller field notes, which should be written shortly after leaving the field so that they are written close to the time of actual observations and are therefore more reliable.

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