Homework #3: Collecting Field Notes

Note:  See lecercle's photo stream for more images and comments about life and culture visible from a Calcutta Coffee House.

Field research provides a window into sub-cultures, groups, and locales in ways that larger scale, more quantitative research is unable.  Field research is a good way to learn about what places are like, how people behave and what it all might mean.   This assignment provides an introduction to the process unobtrusive observation in public spaces, and making and recording observations in the form of field notes.

This blog post describes the preliminary steps in the assignment.

Part #1:  Tuesday

1. Meet in class to discuss assignment.
2. Read and discuss handout on observing and collecting field data. 
1. See "Fieldnotes.pdf" in the 351 share file
1. Fitting in
2. Observing in rich detail
3. Writing it down
4. Thinking about what you observe
3. Discuss task of collecting data as a social scientist
1. Compare and contrast to reporting
1. Flickr Photo Essay
2. Moving from Observations to claims and themes
3. Challenge of evaluating claims
4. Discuss potential research sites
1. Baker center; Front room; Perks; Donkey; Lil Professor?
5. Preliminary study
1. Chose site
2. Go there, and observe and take notes for 30 min
3. Make notes as complete as possible
4. Interpret any patterns in your observations
5. Identify one claim or theme
1. How would you test or investigate that theme?

Part #2:   Thursday

1. Type up your field notes on a google doc
1. Bring field notes, interpretation, theme, and test plan to class on Thursday.
2. Discuss as a group
3. Add your notes and interpretation to the "Baker Center Field Notes" document.
1. Discuss
4. Develop Research goals for second data collection 
1. Goal 1?
2. Goal 2?
2. Develop plan for research sites to visit: 
1. Generate list of possible places to visit
1. Coffee houses
2. Restaurants
3. Bars
4. Others?
2. Form data collection teams: 
1. 2-3 people per team
2. Assign teams to sites
3. Set time(s) to collect data
4. Make team google doc to combine notes o
3. Develop research report plan
1. What should we create?
2. How should we share it?

Part #3:    Writing up your field note in a report

1. Report on Field Research
2. What it includes:    
1. Create it as a google document;  share it with your group and with me.
2. Title based on themes that you found
3. Image (s)
4. Main text describing what you found
1. Introduction
2. General description of setting
3. Findings
1. Finding one
1. Quote or description
2. Interpretation
3. Significance
2. Finding two
1. Quote or description
2. Interpretation
3. Significance
3. Finding two
1. Quote or description
2. Interpretation
3. Significance
4. Other observations, as necessary
4. Discussion and conclusion
1. Relevance of observations and themes to other research
2. Further investigations
5. References

Part #3.5:     Advice on your write up

The first helpful thing to consider is that there were three general questions that everyone went in with:  
1.  what is the place like
2.  what are the people like
3.  how do they interact

Given those as your general questions, you would want your write up to include info that would be your particular answers to those questions.  It is helpful to start by assuming that your readers don’t know anything about [your study site], can you describe what it is like a bit? You should do this in a way that is accurate and INTERESTING. Vivid details that truly reflect what the place, people, interaction are like are great. Think of observations that EXEMPLIFY what the place is like. It is often helpful to think of the intro as a narrative, as though you are painting a scene for a movie or other type of vivid window into a social world.

After you have moved beyond the sort of general intro to what the place, people and interaction is like, you would want to provide particular observations and themes (your three themes) that give us a more in-depth window into particular folks/interaction/etc. that are interesting and related to ideas from sociology. Consider that your intro has set the stage, now your three key observations should be organized as themes, with the observations providing evidence, an in-depth slice into what some key part of that social world is like, what it means, and should be interesting to us for sociological reasons.

I want to emphasize that this type of work, analysis and writing is difficult. Good luck and have fun.