Taking Notes
Most field research data are in the form of field notes, and writing good notes is critical in field research. Full field note can contain maps, diagrams, photographs, interviews, tap recordings, videotapes, memos, objects from the field, and detailed notes written away from the field. A field researcher expects to fill many notebooks or file cabinets, or the equivalent in computer memory. She spends more time writing notes than being in the field.
Writing notes is often boring, tedious work that requires self-discipline. The notes contain extensive descriptive detail drawn from memory. A research makes it a daily habit or compulsion to write notes immediately after leaving a field. She keep them neat and organized because she will return to them over and over again. Once written, the notes are private and valuable. A researcher treats them with care and protects confidentiality. Members have the right to remain anonymous, and researcher often use pseudonyms (false names) in notes. Field notes may be of interest to hostile parties, blackmailers, or legal officials, so some researchers write field note in code.
Type of field note
1. Jotted Notes
It is nearly impossible to take good notes in the field. Even a known observer in a public setting looks strange when furiously writing. More important, when she looks down and writes she cannot see and hear what is happening. The attention given to note writing is taken from field observation where it belongs. The specific setting determines whether she can take any note in the field. She may be able to write, and members may expect it, or she may have to be secretive (go to rest room)
Jotted notes are written in the field. They are short, temporary memory triggers such as words, phrases, or drawings taken inconspicuously, often scribbled on any convenient item. They are incorporated into direct observation notes but are never substituted for them.
2. Direct observation notes
The basic source of field data are notes a research writes immediately after leaving a field, which she can add later. She organizes the notes chronologically with the date, time, and place on each entry. The notes are a detailed description of what she heard and saw in concrete, specific terms. To extent possible, They are an exact recording of particular words, phrases, or action.
3. Researcher inference notes
A field researcher listens to members in order to climb into their skin or walk in their shoes. This involves a three step process. She listens without applying her analytical categories; she compares what is heard to what was heard at other times and to what others say; then she applies her own interpretation to infer or figure out what it means. In ordinary interaction we do all three steps simultaneously and jump quickly to our own inferences. A field researcher learns to look and listen without inferring or imposing an interpretation. Her observations without inferences go into direct observation notes.
A research records inferences in a separate section that is keyed to direct observations. People never see social relationships, emotions, or meaning. They see specific physical actions and hear words; then they use background cultural knowledge, clues from the context, and what is done or said to assign social meaning.
4. Methodological Notes
Research makes many decisions about how to proceed while in the field. Some acts are planned (to conduct an interview, to observe a particular activity) and other attempted. Field researchers keep separate methodological notes to record their plans, tactics, ethical and procedural decisions, and self- critiques of tactics.
5. Theoretical Notes
Theory emerges in field research during data collection and is clarified when a researcher reviews field notes. Theoretical notes are a running account of a researcher’s attempts to give meaning to field events. He think out loud in the notes by suggesting links between ideas, creating hypotheses, proposing conjectures, and developing new concepts.
Analytic memos are part of the theoretical notes. They are systematic digressions into theory, where a researcher elaborates on ideas in depth, expand on ideas while still in the field, and modifies or develops more complex theory by rereading and thinking about the memos.
6. Personal Notes
As discussed earlier, personal feelings and emotional reactions become part of the data and color what a researcher sees or hears in the field. A researcher keeps a section of notes that is like a personal diary. She records personal life events and feelings in it (I am tense today, I wonder if it’ because of the fight I had yesterday with……)
Personal notes serve three functions. They provide and outlet for a researcher and a way to cope with stress; they are a source of data about personal reactions; they give her a way to evaluate direct observation or inference notes when she rereads notes later. For example, if she was in a good mood during observations, it might color what she observed.
Maps and Diagrams
Field researchers often make maps and draw diagrams or pictures of the features of a field site. This serves two purposes: It helps a researcher organize events in the field, and it helps convey a field site to others. Field researchers find three types of maps helpful: spatial, social, and temporal.
A spatial map locates people, equipment, and the like in terms of geographical physical space to show where activities occur.
A social map shows the number or variety of people and the arrangements among them of power, influence, friendship, and/or division of labor.
A temporal map shows the ebb and flow of people, goods, services and communications or schedules.