Field+Trip+-+research+methods

Research Methods for the Field Trip
Participant Observation: Participant observation is a very open-ended research method and is central to field research in cultural anthropology. Basically the method involves observation of people, interactions, cultural spaces, objects, and acts. Since doing research means the the researcher is there in the midst of his/her research subjects, he or she will necessarily be participating in the interactions, negotiating the cultural spaces, engaging the objects, and acting within the society he/she is researching. Basically, participant-observation emerges from the act of immersing oneself in an unfamiliar cultural milieu and attending to it in a systematic way while learning to negotiate it successfully. Documentation is via notes, journals, drawings, photo's, audiotapes, videos, etc. Basically, anthropologists use particpant observation in an attempt to understand another culture from within by learning that culture. As a researcher becomes more familiar with the cultural milieu he/she has chosen, other methods of investigation will come into play.

Survey: A survey of physical objects is basically an extension of "looking around." By making that process explicit, organized, and documented. The product of a survey of material objects is an inventory. To do a useful survey one must have: 1) A survey goal - what sort of information do you want. 2) A survey corpus - how do you decide what to include and ignore in your survey 3) A survey strategy - what methods will you use to complete your survey 4) a means of documentation - how do you document and preserve both the circumstances and content of the

Interview: An interview is basically an extension of conversation by making that process explicit, organized, and documented. To conduct a useful interview, one must have: 1) an interview goal - what sort of information do you want? 2) an interview subject - how do you decide just who is likely to have that information 3) an interview strategy - how do you use the conversation to elicit that information 4) a means of documentation - how do you document and preserve both the circumstances and content of the interview. A very useful product, often emerging from several interviews, is a narrative or story drawn from the experiences of the interviewee. One such narrative is a "life history" which is a narrated biography. Other narratives might address a particular subject such as "border crossing" narratives or "workspace" narratives.

Photography: Basically freezing a visual moment in time for inspection later. A form of documentation. Photograpy is a technology rather than a method. This technology can be useful in many ways - surveys, for example, can be done using photographic images of the survey realm. Photographs can also be useful in interviews - in terms of providing documentation (interview subjects can be photographed and documentaty infomation attached. Photographs can also be eliciting tools in interviews and can be given as gifts to interview subjects. Similarly, a researcher might give an interview subject a camera and invite him or her to take photographs bearing on a particular topic.

Audio/Video recording: Like photography, audio and video recording freezes a sequence of audio or video or audiovideo images and can be useful in similar ways. A warning, the more elaborate a particular research technology becomes, the more likely it is to fail or create problems.

Link: For a bit more depth into the proceedures and issues:

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Ethnographic_Research.html