Field Research: A Qualitative Research Technique

69 Getting In

When embarking on a field research project, there are two major things to consider, as follows. The first is where to observe and the second is what role you will take in your field site. Your decision about each of these will be shaped by a number of factors, some of which you will have control over and others which you will not. Your decision about where to observe and what role to play will also have consequences for the data you are able to gather and how you analyze and share those data with others. We will examine each of these contingencies in the following subsections.

Choosing a site

Where you observe might be determined by your research question, but because field research often works inductively, you may not have a totally focused question before you begin your observations. In some cases, field researchers choose their final research question once they embark on data collection. Other times, they begin with a research question but remain open to the possibility that their focus may shift as they gather data. In either case, when you choose a site, there are a number of factors to consider. These questions include:

  1. What do you hope to accomplish with your field research?
  2. What is your topical/substantive interest?
  3. Where are you likely to observe behaviour that has something to do with that topic?
  4. How likely is it that you will actually have access to the locations that are of interest to you?
  5. How much time do you have to conduct your participant observations?
  6. Will your participant observations be limited to a single location, or will you observe in multiple locations?

Perhaps the best place to start as you work to identify a site or sites for your field research is to think about your limitations. One limitation that could shape where you conduct participant observation is time. Field researchers typically immerse themselves in their research sites for many months, sometimes even years. As demonstrated in Table 12.1 “Field Research Examples”, other field researchers have spent as much or even more time in the field. Do you have several years available to conduct research, or are you seeking a smaller-scale field research experience? How much time do you have to participate and observe per day? Per week? Identifying how available you’ll be in terms of time will help you determine where and what sort of research sites to choose. Also think about where you live and whether travel is an option for you. Some field researchers move to live with or near their population of interest. Is this something you might consider? Is it an option for you? How you answer these questions will shape how you identify your research site. Where might your field research questions take you?

In choosing a site, also consider how your social location might limit what or where you can study. The ascribed aspects of our locations are those that are involuntary, such as our age or race or mobility. For example, how might your ascribed status as an adult, shape your ability to conduct complete participation in a study of children’s birthday parties? The achieved aspects of our locations, on the other hand, are those that we have some choice about. In field research, we may also have some choice about whether or the extent to which we reveal the achieved aspects of our identities.

Finally, in choosing a research site consider whether your research will be a collaborative project or whether you are on your own.  Collaborating with others has many benefits; you can cover more ground and therefore collect more data than you can on your own. And having collaborators in any research project, but especially field research, means having others with whom to share your trials and tribulations in the field. However, collaborative research comes with its own set of challenges such as possible personality conflicts among researchers, competing commitments in terms of time and contributions to the project, and differences in methodological or theoretical perspectives (see Shaffir, Marshall, & Haas, 1979).  When considering something that is of interest to you, consider also whether you have possible collaborators. How might having collaborators shape the decisions you make about where to conduct participant observation?

This section began by asking you to think about limitations that might shape your field site decisions. But it makes sense to also think about the opportunities—social, geographic, and otherwise—that your location affords. Perhaps you are already a member of an organization where you would like to conduct research. Maybe you know someone who knows someone else who might be able to help you access a site. Perhaps you have a friend you could stay with, enabling you to conduct participant observations away from home. Choosing a site for participation is shaped by all these factors—your research question and area of interest, a few limitations, some opportunities, and sometimes a bit of being in the right place at the right time.

Choosing a role

As with choosing a research site, some limitations and opportunities beyond your control might shape the role you take once you begin your participant observation. You will also need to make some deliberate decisions about how you enter the field and “who” you will be once you are in.

In terms of entering the field, one of the earliest decisions you will need to make is whether to be overt or covert. As an overt researcher, you enter the field with research participants having some awareness about the fact that they are the subjects of social scientific research. Covert researchers, on the other hand, enter the field as though they are full participants, opting not to reveal that they are also researchers or that the group they’ve joined is being studied. As you might imagine, there are pros and cons to both approaches. A critical point to keep in mind is that whatever decision you make about how you enter the field will affect many of your subsequent experiences in the field.

As an overt researcher, you may experience some trouble establishing rapport at first. Having an insider at the site who can vouch for you will certainly help, but the knowledge that subjects are being “watched” will inevitably (and understandably) make some people uncomfortable and possibly cause them to behave differently than they would were they not aware of being research subjects. Because field research is typically a sustained activity that occurs over several months or years, it is likely that participants will become more comfortable with your presence over time. Overt researchers also avoid a variety of moral and ethical dilemmas that they might otherwise face.

As a covert researcher, “getting in” your site might be quite easy; however, once you are in, you may face other issues. Some questions to consider are as follows:

  1. How long would you plan to conceal your identity?
  2. How might participants respond once they discover you’ve been studying them?
  3. How will you respond if asked to engage in activities you find unsettling or unsafe?

Researcher, Jun Li (2008) struggled with the ethical challenges of “getting in” to interview female gamblers as a covert researcher.  Her research was part of a post-doctoral fellowship from the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre to study female gambling culture. In response to these ethical aspects, she changed her research role to overt; however, in her overt role female gamblers were reluctant to “speak their minds” to her (p. 100). As such she once again adjusted her level of involvement in the study to one who participated in female gambling culture as an insider and observed as an outsider. You can read her interesting story at the following link: Ethical Challenges in Participant Observation: A Reflection on Ethnographic Fieldwork

Beyond your own personal level of comfort with deceiving participants and willingness to take risks, it is possible that the decision about whether to enter the field covertly will be made for you. If you are conducting research while associated with any federally funded agency (and even many private entities), your institutional review board (IRB) probably will have something to say about any planned deception of research subjects. Some IRBs approve deception, but others look warily upon a field researcher engaging in covert participation. The extent to which your research site is a public location, where people may not have an expectation of privacy, might also play a role in helping you decide whether covert research is a reasonable approach.

As mentioned, having an insider at your site who can vouch for you is helpful. Such insiders, with whom a researcher may have some prior connection or a closer relationship than with other site participants, are called key informants. A key informant can provide a framework for your observations, help “translate” what you observe, and give you important insight into a group’s culture. If possible, having more than one key informant at a site is ideal, as one informant’s perspective may vary from another’s.

Once you have made a decision about how to enter your field site, you will need to think about the role you will adopt while there. Aside from being overt or covert, how close will you be to participants? In the words of Fred Davis (1973), [12] who coined these terms in reference to researchers’ roles, will you be a Martian, a Convert, or a bit of both? Davis describes the Martian role as one in which a field researcher stands back a bit, not fully immersed in the lives of his subjects, in order to better problematize, categorize, and see with the eyes of a newcomer what’s being observed. From the Martian perspective, a researcher should remain disentangled from too much engagement with participants. The Convert, on the other hand, intentionally dives right into life as a participant. From this perspective, it is through total immersion that understanding is gained. Which approach do you feel best suits you?

In the preceding section we examined how ascribed and achieved statuses might shape how or which sites are chosen for field research. They also shape the role the researcher adopts in the field site. The fact that the authors of this textbook are professors, for example, is an achieved status. We can choose the extent to which we share this aspect of our identities with field study participants. In some situations, sharing that we are professors may enhance our ability to establish rapport; in other field sites it might stifle conversation and rapport-building. As you have seen from the examples provided throughout this chapter, different field researchers have taken different approaches when it comes to using their social locations to help establish rapport and dealing with ascribed statuses that differ from those of their “subjects.”

Whatever role a researcher chooses, many of the points made in Chapter XI, “Quantitative Interview Techniques” regarding power and relationships with participants apply to field research as well. In fact, the researcher-researched relationship is even more complex in field studies, where interactions with participants last far longer than the hour or two it might take to interview someone. Moreover, the potential for exploitation on the part of the researcher is even greater in field studies as relationships are usually closer and lines between “research” and personal or off-the-record interaction may get blurred. These precautions should be seriously considered before deciding to embark upon a field research project.

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An Introduction to Research Methods in Sociology Copyright © 2019 by Valerie A. Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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