{"id":64,"date":"2010-05-28T14:04:12","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T21:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tabithahart.net\/?p=64"},"modified":"2010-05-28T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2010-05-28T21:04:12","slug":"writing-ethnographic-fieldnotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Writing ethnographic fieldnotes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loving to write does not make it any less of an arduous task, and writing good fieldnotes is, I think, a true labor of love.\u00a0 The best fieldnotes, i.e. the ones that will most help you in your data analysis and write-up, are those that are most thoroughly detailed and descriptive, and it is no easy task to produce these. One of the best guides I\u2019ve found on this process is \u201cWriting ethnographic fieldnotes,\u201d by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I first began writing ethnographic fieldnotes I was a student researcher at UCSD\u2019s Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition<\/a> where I worked on a project about bilingual afterschool education. For that project a group of us tutored local children at an afterschool computer club.\u00a0 After each session, we spent long hours at our computers, writing up pages and pages of our observations and experiences.\u00a0 I still remember being amazed at how long it took.<\/p>\n

Nowadays I enter the field with better-formed plans and strategies in mind.\u00a0 One such strategy is \u201cbracketing,\u201d as described by Bruce L. Berg in his excellent book, \u201cQualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.\u201d Bracketing entails selecting \u201ccertain subgroups of inhabitants [of a social setting] and observing them during specific times, in certain locations, and during the course of particular events and\/or routines.\u201d\u00a0 (Berg, 2001, p. 153)\u00a0 In other words, you think strategically about who exactly you need to observe, doing what, where, and when.\u00a0 It\u2019s also important to carefully consider what your observational procedure will be once you enter the site.<\/p>\n

In terms of deciding what to write down, Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw advise that we first take note of and describe our initial impressions of the scene, and then move on to describing \u201ckey events or incidents\u201d (1995, p.27). Another key point is that:<\/p>\n

“In writing fieldnotes, the field researcher should give special attention to the indigenous meanings and concerns of the people studied.\u00a0 …fieldnotes should detail the social and interactional processes that make up people’s everyday lives and activities….\u00a0 Ethnographers should attempt to write fieldnotes in ways that capture and preserve indigenous meanings.” \u00a0(Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 12)<\/p>\n

In other words, writing fieldnotes is an excellent way understanding your participants\u2019 worlds from their perspectives, including the meanings that they attach to their actions and interactions.<\/p>\n

Aside from guides and strategies, the key thing about fieldnotes is to write them up as quickly as possible, since the longer you wait the less you\u2019ll remember.\u00a0 Ideally, you\u2019re sitting at your computer, typing away, no later than a few hours after each observation session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loving to write does not make it any less of an arduous task, and writing good fieldnotes is, I think, a true labor of love.\u00a0 The best fieldnotes, i.e. the ones that will most help you in your data analysis and write-up, are those that are most thoroughly detailed and descriptive, and it is no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}