Just note taking isn't all there is to field work organization and

quite some researchers I've seen and especially students,

young researches have neglected this part of field work.

And it's very important,

because if we look at one of the sheets that I showed in one of the first lectures

on participant observation with the features of participant observation.

I showed you something on participation, on observation said something about

access, about writing, but I didn't say something that is one of the most

important features of participant observation and that is organization.

Organization is tremendously important,

because you can do unstructured observation, that's perfectly fine.

You can do unsystematic observation, that's perfectly fine.

But you can't make a mess of your data, because that's sloppy science.

It means you can't find some material and you forget stuff,

you lose stuff and so on.

So you have to organize stuff properly and in fieldwork,

you have to deal with people, so you have to organize your fieldwork properly.

So where do you have to think of?

What kinds of things?

Well, the first thing is hanging out.

Hanging out takes time.

Anthropologists would call it deep hanging out, which means that

you stay with people for long period of time and you hang out with them.

You do things with them, you go shopping with them and

it's terribly boring sometimes.

But being bored doesn't mean you are not doing research, because you're doing

research, but you have to plan it, you have to plan time for hanging out.

It takes days and days on end in order to understand some tiny

bits of a specific cultural situation.

So plan this time.

Plan also your appointments.

Making appointments and keeping appointments, especially the various,

obviously is important.

Many informants do not keep appointments, but you have to as a researcher and

prepare your data collection before and.

Think about what am I going to ask these people?

Where am I going to focus on?

And during fearing fieldwork, during the research, review your data collection.

Just sit back for a few minutes or a few hours and then reflect,

what am I doing here?

Is this correct?

Is this focus okay?

Or am I creating some sort of tunnel vision?

Or am I only confirming my own biases?

So you have to take time for this and plan this time and

then this is important, plan your writing time.

I tend that in my field work in Sri Lanka, I tend not to go to festivals,

which was really interesting and really nice and

they took many hours until deep at night and I watch them and watch them and

watch them and then I come back the next day and there is something else to watch.

So, I forgot to write down my material and it's really bad.

So take time, plan writing time to write full field notes.

Plan time in order to transcribe your material.

Plan time to reflect and to write down these memos.

Not just sit and ponder, but also write them down.

I'm preaching a bit, but it's necessary, because you have to organize your data.

There are quite some people who start out like this.

They have an empty box and in this empty box, they throw in their material.

It might be documents, it might be full field notes, it might be transcripts.

And they just throw it in, because back home, they will start organizing it.

And this is a physical box, but you can also think of a folder on a computer.

You just throw it in a folder and then fill it up and then if it's full,

you will make new folders or you'll make new boxes and

you'll fill them up again and then again and again and again.

And this is what happened with quite some students, but also colleagues.

They came back from field work doing autographic field works and their room was

full of material and all of the material, all the data is inside those boxes,

but those boxes were complete messes inside and that's terrible.

It's sloppy science.

So how can we structure?

How can you structure your material?

Well, let's structure observation notes and you can organize them by date.

You can put them in a ring binder by date, the latest one on top.

That's a good way to organize diachronically, but

maybe you can also organize by type of material.

So field notes, different types of field notes,

full field notes as well as minutes of meetings as well as

summaries of interviews or some other material.

And you want to organize them in a different way, as well.

So then you need to have at least two folders to build binders, because one for

the organizational date and one for the organization and type of material and

you have to copy everything or what if you have to organize on theme?

Well, you have to copy it again.

Because some documents are on this theme,

whereas some observations are also on this theme.

So you have to have a new binder and then a new binder and

probably a new binder again and that's how people used to do it.

But it's not really handy, because now we only have five different

ways of structuring, but you can think of many more.

So how to deal with that issue?

Well, the classical solution is use an index.

Use card boxes and then go through them and find numbers of documents and

have these documents organized simply by numbers.

Now that's really classic solutions.

Now a days, we use computers.

So why not in doing field work?

So the smarter solution is to bring your data from your phone to your laptop and

then use software,

as it's usually called computer assisted qualitative data analysis.

So these kinds of software will help you in organizing your data.

You do not even need to cope with them, but just organization is so

necessary and so important to do proper science.

2.8 Fieldwork organisation

Qualitative Research Methods

Meet the Instructors