Research Methods, Field Studies

Field studies refer to studies that are conducted in a natural setting such as school, home, or play area. The use of field studies is especially seen in two traditions of media research. The first focuses on media effects by, for example, observing whether viewing of violent contents encourages aggressive modes of behavior. The second tradition is that of cultural studies, in which field studies are conducted to examine such topics as the way media are used and embedded in various social and cultural contexts in people's daily life.

Television has received the most attention in field studies conducted on children's use of media. Besides the effects of television on aggressive behavior, as well as the effects of advertising, the main focus has been on how young viewers interact with (e.g., emotionally) and interpret TV programs, usually applying a cognitive-developmental perspective, and on their social uses of television. In an example of such research, Tannis MacBeth Williams and colleagues studied the effects of television in a Canadian town before and after TV arrived in the households. The researchers observed an increased number of aggressive acts by second graders in classrooms and on the playground.

The work of Michelle A. Wolf in the United States examines how younger children (4 to 12 years old) [Page 724]make sense of television programs by observing and interviewing the children and by letting them produce their own television programs at a day-care/summer camp facility. Several aspects are discussed, including the influence of personality on content preferences, children's ability to distinguish between reality and fiction, and their understanding of television's narrative conventions. Another study on television has been conducted by the Australian researcher Patricia Palmer, who analyzed younger children's (8 to 9 and 11 to 12 years old) relationship with television in their homes, using interviews, drawings, observations, and surveys. The project looks at how television content is discussed and defined by children (taking into account age and gender), what they actually do in front of the TV set, and the social uses of television within the family and among friends. A more recent field study has been done by Danish media researcher Jesper Olesen, who observed and compared children's (10 to 12 years old) use of television and video with the family and peers at home. The study shows how the two types of viewing contexts influence the child's viewer position. Children are regarded as experienced viewers when watching with friends, but different rules apply in the family, where the child is assigned a subordinate position as adults evaluate the child's experience in terms of age and developmental stage.

Although the most common methods used in field studies are observations, interviews, and field notes, changing perspectives in child and childhood research have evolved recently, with implications for the methods used in field studies. Children today are seen as reliable informants of their own experiences. The need to perceive young people as active researchers is also stressed in terms of, for example, having a say in the nature and focus of research. By, for instance, providing children with different visual means in research, such as video cameras, new opportunities are given to the children to construct visual representations of their lives, and new types of knowledge result.

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