FIELDWORK AND QUALITATIVE DATA

(Summary of chapter 3 and 4)

Qualitative research methodology assignment

Lecture: DR. Alfan Zuhairi, M.Pd

Disusun oleh:

By:

Praise Evelynna Nurhadie

NPM: 2111040226

PROGRAM PASCA SARJANA PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

UNIVERSITAS ISLAM MALANG

2012

CHAPTER 3

FIELDWORK

In this chapter, we discuss about fieldwork. We focus on how you, as researcher should

conduct yourself-from gaining access to leaving the field-and the issues involved in maintaining

and establishing rapport (close relationship and understanding).

Fieldwork refers to being out in the subjects’ world, which we have described not as a

person who pauses while passing by, but as a person who has come for a visit; not as a person

who knows everything, but as a person who has come to learn; not as a person who wants to be

like them, but as a person who wants to know what it is like to be them. You work toward

winning their acceptance, not as an end, but because it allows you to do or reach your research

goals (Geertz, 1979, p.241)

To achieve quality of fieldwork is the goal in establishing relation, whether the research

method is participant observation, interviewing, or searching documents. In interview, researcher

often makes a repeat visits to his or her subjects and sometimes interviewing them for many

hours in their own homes or other places where they normally spend their time.

GAINING ACCES

COVERT RESEARCH

Covert research that is undertaken without the consent or knowledge of respondents. This

type of social research is most strongly associated with participant observational work where a

researcher joins a group or organization assuming a covert role in order to observe firsthand the

functioning and daily life of the group. Covert research has a strong tradition in sociological and

criminological work.

The first problem face in the fieldwork is getting permission to conduct your study. Some

circumvent this problem by doing covert research, the collecting of data without their subject

knowledge; they might for example get jobs at school or enroll as students without announcing

to the school what they are doing.

OVERT RESEARCH

Our advice to the novice (person who is new and inexperience) could use the overt

research (with the requirement that research proposals must be approved by the institutional

review board, so it is doubtful that research using covert approach would be permitted).

COOPERATIVE STYLE

Some have analyzed this approach and called the researchers to be more confrontational

and deceptive. Feminist methodologist have advocated for less hierarchical relationship between

interviewer and informant, and sometimes shared decision-making and authorship.

While we have been talking about gaining access as if it was something that only occurred

at the beginning of your study, throughout many studies, permission would have to seek and

cooperation gained as you move out into new theories and meet new people. Following is a list

of common questions with suggestion about how to respond.

1. What are you actually going to do?

2. Will you be disruptive?

3. What are you going to do with your finding?

4. Why us?

5. What will we get out of this?

As you can see, negotiating permission is tricky. We offer three bits of advice:

1. Be persistent

2. Be flexible

3. Be creative

FIRST DAY IN THE FIELD

Here are some suggestions to make your first day in the field less painful:

1. Do not take what happens in the field personally.

2. Set up your first visit so someone is there to introduce you.

3. Do not try to accomplish too much the first view days.

4. Remain relatively passive.

5. Be friendly.

THE PARTICIPANT OR OBSERVER CONTINUUM

Gold has discussed the spectrum of possible roles for observers to play. At one extreme is

the complete observer. Here the researcher does not participate in activities at the setting. He or

she looks at the scene, literally or figuratively, through one-way mirror. At the other hand, it is

complete involvement at the site, with little discernible difference between observer’s and the

subject behaviors.

DOING FIELDWORK IN ANOTHER CULTURE

In one sense, all qualitative research is dome in another cultural. However, studies you do

vary in the degree to which the people you study share your language, customs, and other aspects

of everyday life. Some places you study are radically different from your own background. This

“border crossing” may raise some particular problems for fieldwork. Doing fieldwork in another

country often means being in a different culture but in multicultural America you may find

dramatic differences within the same city or even neighborhood.

In different cultures, there are many different rules about human communication and

relationship. It is easy to misinterpret rapport and other aspects of fieldwork relation if you are

not familiar with these cultural variations. Try to find out about these by discussing them with

other.

RESEARCHER CHARACTERISTICS AND SPECIAL PROBLEMS WITH

RAPPORT

In addition, to understand general aspects of the culture you are studying you have to

understand how your personal characteristics and status might affect your fieldwork relationships

with individual subjects you encounter. To the subjects, you are likely to be seen not just as a

researcher. You may for example, be identified as a middle African American male in his late

twenties with an Ivy League Education. Based on such identifiers or markers, you may be

defining as dangerous, insignificant, or untrustworthy.

Some characteristics in some settings make establishing rapport are easier. Being closer in

age to your subjects or being the same gender may facility rapport. However, this does not mean

that your characteristics always exclude you from studying people who are different from you.

These differences just to have to be taking into account and strategies have to be working out to

convert potential difficulties into advantages.

BE DISCREET

If you conduct your research in a systematic and rigorous way can develop trust, you soon

will become privy to certain information and opinions about which even all insiders might be

aware. It is important, however, not to display too much of your knowledge while talking with

subject, since they may feel uncomfortable for being in the presence of a “know at all”. Do not

discuss anything that has been telling to you in private by one subject with another.

RESEARCHING IN POLITICALLY CHARGED AND CONFLICT-RIDDEN

SETTING

It is common for human service organization to have dissention and political wrangling.

The level can be form mild to intense. Debates on politics and procedures often rage in schools,

hospitals, welfare offices and other such setting staff and client can be distrustful of each other

and those who visit from the outside. This can be particular problem for the researcher. When the

trust level is low, when people are sensitive to particular topics, when they have a lot of gain or

lose by what they say and with whom they speak, or when there are clearly delineated factions

and subgroups, the researcher need to tread with care. Listen carefully and talk a little. If you ask

question phrase them carefully.

FEELING

The researchers’ own feelings and prejudices as possible sources of bias. Qualitative

researchers record their feelings as a method of controlling bias. Here, we approach the topic of

feelings in a different light, for positive impact on research; feelings are an importance vehicle

for establishing rapport and for gauging subjects’ perspective (Johnson, 1975).

Another topic related to feelings, but somewhat different, has done with stress and strains

of being researchers. Fieldwork can be physically and emotionally drain. Be aware of stress and

strain fieldwork can produce and try to do things to eliminate some of it.

HOW LONG SHOULD AN OBSERVATION SESSION BE?

As we suggested, for the first few days limit the sessions to an hour or less. As your

confidence and knowledge of the setting increase, so you can spend your time in any time.

Sometimes, after being in the field a few times, researchers feel that they have not had enough

time with the subjects to establish sufficient rapport. They may decide to spend a longer period.

INTERVIEWING

In qualitative research, interviews may be use in two ways. They may be the dominant

strategy for data collection, or they may be employee in conjunction with participant

observation, document analysis, or other techniques. In all this situation, the interview is used to

gather descriptive data in the subject’ own words so that the researcher can develop insights on

how subjects interpret some piece of the word.

Qualitative research interviews vary in the degree to which they are structured. Some

interviews although relatively open-ended, are focus on around particular topics or may be guide

by some general questions.

Good interviews are those in which subjects are at ease and talk freely about their point of

view. Good interviewers produce rich data filled with words that reveal the respondents’

perspectives. Transcripts are filled with detail and examples. Good interviewers communicate

personal interest and attention to subjects by being attentive, nodding their heads, and using

appropriate facial expression to communicate.

Certainly, a key strategy for the qualitative interviewers in the field is avoided as much as

possible questions that can be answered by “yes” or “no”. Not all people are equally articulate or

perspective, but it is important for the qualitative researcher not to give up on an interviewee too

quickly.

In qualitative research, the emphasis is on standardized procedures in collecting interview

material. When filling out questionnaires with subject, for example researchers are supposed to

act the same in all interviews. They are instructed to follow the standard protocol. Qualitative

researchers believe that each subject needs to be approached somewhat differently.

Good interviewers need to have patience. You often do not know why respondents reply as

they do, and you must wait to find out the full explanation. Interviewers have to be detectives,

fitting bits and pieces of conversation, personal histories and experiences together in order to

develop an understanding of the subject’s perspective.

VISUAL RECORDING AND FIELDWORK

Researcher engaged in qualitative research varies considerably in the degree to which they

use a camera while doing the fieldwork. A few researchers rely extensively on still a video

footage, even employing visual recording, as the prime data collecting approach, most do not.

Cameras have significant potential as a data collecting aid but many qualitative researchers are

shy away from them. Camera can be used in an uncomplicated and unobtrusive manner (to take

inventories of objects in setting).

TRIANGULATION

Recently, the word ‘triangulation’ has been used wide discussion of qualitative research.

Triangulation was a first borrowed in the social sciences to convey the idea that to establish a

fact you need more than one source of information. For example, to be confident that a train

arrived in a certain station on a certain day you need more that the entry from the diary of a

person who was on the train (the person might be inaccurate).

LEAVING THE FIELD

During the first day in the field, you feel awkward and unwanted. As time progresses begin

to feel more comfortable, a part of the scene. Then comes the point when you have accomplished

and what you set out to do and you have to leave. Leaving can be difficult (Maines, Saffir &

Turrowets, 1980).

Many fieldworkers report that they maintain ties with the people with whom they were

involved, returning to the research sites periodically to keep up with subjects’ activities and

situations. Sometimes subjects become lifelong friends. Qualitative researchers have reported

that they enter and leave a site periodically, studying the same people and places longitudinally.

CHAPTER 4

QUALITATIVE DATA

The term data refers to the rough materials researchers collect from the world they are

studying; they are particulars form the basis of analysis. Data includes the materials the people

doing the study effectively record, such as an interview transcripts and participant observation

field notes. Data also includes what the other have created and the researchers finds, such as

diaries, photographs, official documents, and the newspaper articles.

Data are both evidence and the clues. Gathered carefully, they serve as the stubborn facts

that save the writing you will do from unfounded speculation. Data ground you into empirical

world, and when systematically and rigorously collected, link qualitative research to another

form of science. Data involves particulars you need to think soundly and deeply about the

aspects of life you will explore.

Some qualitative studies rely exclusively on one type of data, interview transcripts, for

example, but most use a variety of data sources. Initiate to keep your data physically well

organized, develop a plan about the location of files, about other aspects of your data gets

upsetting, and hinder analysis.

FIELDNOTES

After returning from observation, interview, or other research session, the researcher

typically writes out, preferably on a computer, what happened, he or she renders a description of

people, objects, places, events, activities, and conservations. In addition, it is as part of such

notes. The researcher will record ideas, strategies, reflections and hunches, as well as note

patterns that emerge. These are fieldnotes – the written account of what the researcher hears,

sees, experiences, and thinks in the course of collecting and reflecting data in qualitative study.

THE CONTENT OF FIELDNOTES

Fieldnotes consist of two kinds of material. The first is descriptive (the concern is to

provide a word-picture of the setting, people, actions, and conversations as observed). The

second is reflective (the part of captures more of observer’s frame of mind, ideas, and concerns).

DESCRIPTIVE FIELDNOTES

The descriptive part of the fieldnotes, by far the longest part, represents the researcher’s

best effort to objectively record the details of what they has occurred in the field. The goal is to

capture the slice of life. Aware that all description represents choices and judgments to some

degrees (decisions about what to put down the exact use of words) the qualitative research strives

for accuracy under these limitations.

When we say that the researcher attempts to be as descriptive as possible, we mean that

whatever he or she observes should be presented in detailed rather that summarized or evaluate.

It is particularly important in working on description not to use abstract words (unless you are

quoting the subject).

The descriptive aspects of fieldnotes encompass the following areas:

1. Portraits of the subjects

2. Reconstruction of the dialogue

3. Description of physical setting

4. Account of particular events

5. Depiction of activities

6. The observer’s behavior

REFLECTIVE FIELDNOTES

In addition to descriptive material, fieldnotes contain sentences and paragraphs that reflect

a more personal account of the course of the inquiry. Here you record the more subjective side of

journey. The emphasis is on the speculation, feelings, problems, ideas, hunches, impressions, and

prejudices. In addition, it included material in which you lay out plans for future researcher as

well as classify and correct mistakes or misunderstandings in your fieldnotes. The expectation is

that you let it all hang out; confess your mistakes, your inadequacies, your prejudices, your likes

and dislikes. Speculate about what you think you are learning, what you are going to do next,

and what the outcome of the study is going to be. The purpose of reflection here is not therapy

but to improve the notes. Because of you are so central to the collection of the data and its

analysis. You must be extremely aware of your own relationship to the setting and of the

evolution of the design and analysis. In order to do a good study, you must be self-reflective and

keep on an accurate record of methods, procedures, and evolving analysis. It is difficult to get the

right balance between reflective and descriptive material.

We categorize the materials to elaborate and clarify. Observer’s comments, memos, and

other such materials contain:

1. Reflections on analysis

2. Reflections on method

3. Reflections on ethical dilemmas and conflicts

4. Reflections on the observer’s frame of mind

5. Points of clarification

THE FORM OF FIELDNOTES

a. The first page

The exact form and content may vary, we suggest that the first page of each set of notes

(by set we mean those notes written for a particular observation sessions) contain a heading with

such information as when the observation took place, and the number of this set of notes in the

total study. The headings help you to keep the notes in order and maintain a record of the

conditions under which the notes were taken, they also mare retrieval of information easier.

b. Paragraph and margins

Most methods of analyzing qualitative data require a procedure called ‘coding’. Coding

and other aspects of data analysis are more easily accomplished if the fieldnotes consist of many

paragraphs. When writing notes, every time a change we occur in the topic of conversation,

when a new person enters the setting, or whatever-start a new paragraph. When in doubt, start a

new paragraph. Another way to make your notes useful for analysis is to leave large margins on

the left-hand side of the page. These provide room for notation and coding. Some methods of

coding require pages in which the lines down one side are numbered.

THE PROCESS OF WRITING FIELDNOTES

One problem everyone worries about is memory. Memories can be disciplined. More

important and more immediately helpful in making the most of the ability you presently have,

however, are some helpful hints to employ while writing up fieldnotes.

The person in our story illustrates some of them:

1. Get right to the task. Do not procrastinate.

2. Do not talk about your observation before you record it.

3. Find a quiet place away from distractions and with adequate equipment to record and get

work.

4. Set aside an adequate amount of time to complete the notes.

5. Start by jotting down the notes.

6. Try to go through the course of the observation session chronologically.

7. Let the conversations and events flow from your mind onto the paper.

8. If, after you have finished a section of the notes, you realize that you have forgotten

something, and add it.

9. Understand that note-taking is laborious and burdensome.

THE FORM OF TRASCRIPTS

As with fieldnotes, a heading at the start of each interview helps to organize your data and

to retrieve a specific segment when you want them. Here the heading consist of the person

interviewed, the time of interview occurred, the site of the interview, and any other information

that may help you to remember the content.

In typing, the transcripts must be sure that every time a new person speaks, you start a new

line, noting on the left who the speaker is. The transcripts should paralleling the interview, be

dominated by the subject’s remark appropriately. When a subject talks for a long stretch of time,

break the monologue into frequent paragraph to facilitate.

Tape recorders can create the illusion that research is effortless. Aside from the short

fieldnotes describing the setting and subject, the interviewer usually does not have to worry

about extensive writing after the session. Because of this the researcher might think that the

machine does all the work.

DOCUMENTS

Documents can be categorized as personal documents, official documents, and popular

culture documents. Sometimes these documents are used in connection with, or in support of, the

interviews and participants observation. Documents the subject writes themselves or are written

about them such as autobiographies, personal letters, diaries, memos, minutes from meeting, new

letters, policy documents, proposals, codes of ethics, statements of philosophy, year book, new

releases, scrapbook, letter to the record and folders are included in the data.

The different kinds of documents as a data:

1. Personal documents: intimates diaries, personal letter, autobiographies.

2. Official documents: internal documents, external communication, students’ records and

personnel files.

3. Popular culture documents.

The guidelines may be used in popular culture documents:

a. How interest groups read popular culture documents

b. Your pleasure is significant

c. Decisions about emphasis

d. Individual or group interviews and observations

e. Systematic organization of textual data

4. Photography.

5. Found photography.

6. Researcher-Produced Photograph.

PHOTOGRAPH AS ANALYSIS

While we have discussed photography’s uses in educational research, it is also important to

see photography and the world of picture-takers as important subject matter for study in their

own right. We have to understand hoe society affects and is affected by the photography

enterprise. Only when we do this more fully than we have to date can we explore in-depth the

analytic worth of photographs. Photography can be an educational researcher’s tool, but it must

be understood as a cultural product and as a producer of culture.

TECHNIQUE AND EQUIPMENT

The question to be answered first is “what are the picture suppose to show?” is the goal to

have ‘inventory’ photos of research setting, very little skill may be required. If subtle events of

interpersonal behavior must be captured, it might take quite a bit of discipline and practice to

learn how to capture them with camera. The key is to be able to specify ahead of time what the

content of the desired photo will be.

The final impediment to doing qualitative research with photography is the model release,

for publication, it is imperative that each recognizable individual in each picture sign a release

that gives permission to publish his or her picture. In setting up a study and gaining access to a

site, you will have obtained permission to visit and take some photo, but this is not the same as

the model release. Thus, unless releases also are obtained, you will wind up with a store of

photographic data you cannot use.

OFFICIAL STATISTICS AND OTHER QUALITATIVE DATA

While conducting studies, the qualitative researcher often comes across quantitative data,

others have compiled. Schools, as we have said, keep and generate tremendous amount of data,

teachers may choose to keep the data for their own purposes, the administration collect data on

racial composition, language spoken, handicapping conditions, the number of acts of violence

and suspension, and a host of other numerical computations. At time the qualitative researcher,

find it useful to generate his or her own numerical data.

Statistical data also can serve as a check on ideas that you develop during research. You

might learn through observation, for example, that while male trainees in a job-training program

do not speak of training as important in their lives, female trainees do. Looking at actual official

statistic and comparing them to what subjects verbally report can be helpful in exploring

perception.

While qualitative data collected by others (evaluators, administrators, other researcher) can

be conventionally useful, as we have described, qualitative researchers critically dispose

themselves to the collection of qualitative data. It is not that the numbers themselves hold on

value. The qualitative approach to quantitative data focuses on understanding how counting

actually takes place, not on how it should take place.

The following describes eight ways of thinking about the quantitative data may find in a

school or human services organization (Bogdan & Ksader, 1980) to sensitize you to the

qualitative perspective:

1. The concept of “real rate” is a misnomer

2. Singling out people, object, and events to quantify changes their meaning

3. Quantifying has a temporal dimension

4. Quantification involves many different participants and can only be understood as a

multilevel phenomenon

5. Both the person and his or her motivation for counting affect the meaning the process and

the figures generated

6. Counting releases, social processes within the setting where the counting takes place in

addition to and beyond the activities directly tied to counting

7. People who produce data in educational settings are subjects to social processes and

structural forces similar to those that affect other work group

8. Enumeration and its products have strong affective and ritualistic meaning in the U.S

The discussion of quantitative data, a researcher may come across in the course of a study

is designed to sensitize you to a qualitative perspective on “hard data”.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have to describe the qualitative approach to data as well as the various forms that

qualitative data can take. We have not been exhaustive. Some people make extensive use of

videotape equipment and film to pursue qualitative research; we have not covered their activities.

Others analyze themes and images of women and minority groups as presented in the mass

media as well as in school textbooks. They also have been neglected. School yearbooks and

literary magazines provide another area of data that we only touch upon in our discussion. While

these and other types of data also exist, we shall move on, hoping that you have grasped the

perspective that data are not only what one collect in course of study, but what things look like

when approached in a “research” frame of mind. Being a good qualitative researcher is in part,

learning this perspective: specific details are useful clues to understanding your subjects’ world.

Qualitative research involves holding objects and events up to the sensitive instrument of

your mind to discern their values as data. It means to have a grasp on the reason the objects were

produced and how that affects the form are as well as the information potential of what you are

surveying. It also involves knowing when to discount certain pieces of data as being of dubious

value and when to pursue them.