Essay #4 - “Fundamentals of Field Research (Part I)”

"Fundamentals of Field Research (Part I)"

Bar Ranch Strategy Partners

September 5, 2024

A major goal of Bar Ranch Strategy Partners is to conduct rigorous, insightful research on the revitalization of the American Midwest. This will involve us traveling across the region, visiting places of interest, speaking with local people, and building our knowledge of the realities “on the ground.”

Accordingly, it is good to establish a solid foundation in research methodology, in order to ensure the data collected and analyzed is reliable and high quality.

We plan on conducting field research expeditions across the region, from the Rust Belt to the Iron Range to the Great Plains, and to aid in this endeavor, this essay is focused on a discussion on field research methodology, as described in Chapter 13 of Neuman’s Social Research Methods.

Neuman, W. L. (2011). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. 

Let’s get started.

…

First off – what is field research, why is it important, and how do we plan to use it?

In order to gain a better understanding of the socio-economic realities of our area – the American Midwest – we have to first get out into the region and explore. This exploratory field research can help to generate insights and uncover future directions of analysis, along with gaining a better sense of current realities and the “lay of the land.”

According to Neuman, field research “requires directly talking with and observing the people being studied. Through personal interactions over months or years, you learn about these people and their life histories, hobbies, habits, hopes, fears, and dreams” (Neuman, 2011: 421).

Specifically, “field research is appropriate when we want to learn about, understand, or describe a group of interacting people,” and “most field research studies focus on a particular location or setting” (421).

In the future, we intend to conduct a wide range of studies utilizing a variety of methodologies, including content analysis and quantitative data analysis. To lay the foundations for these later studies, however, going out into the world and conducting field research – visiting places, meeting people, exploring the land – will help us to develop hypotheses and refine insights that can later be studied using other methods.

Field research has a very interesting history, and we certainly hope to learn from the “glory days” of these studies, and to capture some degree of that romance in our own research as well. One famous field researcher was Bronisław Malinowski, a Polish-British anthropologist who popularized modern field research methodology standards during his expeditions to the Trobriand Islands off the coast of New Guinea in the early twentieth century. We will be reading sections from his famous book – Argonauts of the Western Pacific – in our future discussions on ethnographic field research.

As Neuman writes, Malinowski “was the first field researcher to live with a group of people for a long period of time and write about collecting data” (422). This desire to get “off the verandah,” or out into the field, distinguishes field research from studies on campus and in the library. Continuing, Malinowski “presented intensive fieldwork as a new method and argued for separating direct observation and native statements from the observer’s inferences. He held that the best way to develop an in-depth understanding of a community or culture was for a researcher to directly interact with and live among the native peoples, learning their customs, beliefs, and social processes” (422).

This does indeed make sense, and will serve as a guiding principle for Bar Ranch field research. In order to understand the modern American Midwest, and to effectively separate these realities from our preconceived notions, it is necessary to get out on the road, traveling across the region and studying its circumstances for what they are, as much as possible.

Within the United States, the University of Chicago is famous for its contributions to field research methodology, particularly in the “second phase” of the Chicago School of sociology, which arose after World War II and into the 1960s. As Neuman writes, Chicago School scholars "developed participant observation as a distinct technique by expanding anthropological technique to study a researcher’s own society” (423). This technique of participant observation will be critical for our field research, as it allows the investigator to get directly involved in the social activities under investigation, thereby enabling access to potentially richer insights than can be gained from non-involved study.

Through their development of participant observation techniques, the Chicago School researchers developed three primary principles, according to Neuman: “(1) Study people in their natural settings, or in situ; (2) Study people by directly interacting with them repeatedly over time; and (3) develop broad theoretical insights based on an in-depth understanding of members’ perspectives of the social world” (423, original emphasis).

In future discussions on field research methodology, we will continue to analyze the principles of Malinowski and the Chicago School, along with the writings of famous explorers such as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whose epic Corps of Discovery expedition up the Missouri River produced great examples of field research study.

As Neuman continues, “today field researchers directly observe and interact with members in natural settings to acquire an “inside” perspective,” and to do field research is simultaneously to describe the social world and to be an actor within it” (423). Our research at Bar Ranch, undertaken with the intent of developing strategies and policies designed to enact meaningful change, certainly falls under that category.

Field research is a broad category, of course, and can utilized in a wide range of disciplines, including biology, anthropology, and economics. Within this larger context, we will be conducting ethnographic studies, which will enable a multifaceted investigation of the cultures and social groups in our area.

Ethnography, Neuman writes, “comes from cultural anthropology,” as “ethno means people or folk, and graphy refers to writing about or describing something” (423, original emphasis). For a specific definition, ethnography “is a description of a people and/or their culture,” and is a form of “field research that emphasizes providing a very detailed description of a different culture from the viewpoint of an insider in the culture to facilitate understanding it” (423).

“By using ethnography,” Neuman writes, “we describe people’s lives and behavior but also try to infer the meaning or behavior (i.e., the thoughts or beliefs that reside behind it).” The major goal of ethnography is to "move from what we can easily observe externally to what the people we observe truly feel and mean internally” (423-424). In practical terms, ethnographic writings intend to provide a rich, “thick description” of social and cultural knowledge, both explicit and implicit.

There is a logic to ethnographic field research, in addition to a purpose and method, which we shall describe shortly. Field researchers take a “naturalist” perspective on their subjects, seeking to observe them in a natural setting, as close to their “normal” circumstances as is possible. Various observations, insights, and expressions are assembled in a form of “bricolage” that seeks a greater understanding of the larger whole.

Based upon this foundation, the next sections provided by Neuman are especially relevant and useful for our own field research purposes. They include discussions on what field researchers do, and the various steps involved in the field research process.

In order to keep this short and sweet, we’ll wrap this essay up here and continue with those sections in Part II of our discussion on the fundamentals of field research.

See you soon.

Sam

References

Ambrose, S. (1997). Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of the Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge.

Neuman, W. L. (2011). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.