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Field Notes
Field notes are written observations recorded during or soon after participant observations in the field. Sharan Merriam and Elizabeth Tisdell (2015) characterize field notes as “what is written down or mechanically recorded from a period of observations”; put another way, field notes are raw data that come in either a complete (continuous) or sketch-like form (p. 149). Merriam and Tisdell urge researchers to write, type, or dictate field notes into a full narrative as soon after an observation as possible. Field notes can also be described as qualitative notes that are recorded by the researcher in the course of studying a particular phenomenon. Field notes are generally kept before, during, and after a study and help elucidate a phenomenon being researched.
Field notes allow researchers to return to a research context so that they can gain further insights into not only the subject of the research but also the researcher’s initial observations of the subject. For example, ethnographers generally engage in high levels of participant observations to gain insights into cultural norms and practices. Field notes are a very useful component of data collection because they can support conclusions that researchers have drawn about the research subject at hand. This entry discusses different types of field notes and their uses. It concludes with an example detailing the organization of field notes in a particular type of study.
Kinds of Field Notes
In the literature, there are generally two kinds of field notes: descriptive and reflective. Descriptive field notes are detailed descriptions of the things that researchers observe and the people with whom researchers interact during the research process. Simply put, descriptive field notes are about what researchers see and hear during their fieldwork. The chief difference between descriptive field notes and reflective field notes is the requirement that descriptive field notes be detailed, accurate, and nonevaluative.
Because descriptive field notes are the backbone of all fieldwork, they can come from such field-work activities as interviews with informants, observations of human interactions, and observations of human practices. Field notes should capture both the behavioral details of observed subjects and the contextual details of the surrounding environment. Contextual details in field notes pertaining to an interview would, for example, cover such items as (1) the location of the interview, (2) the way in which the location is related to the study, (3) the location’s features, (4) the people present during the interview, (5) the arrangement of these people in the location, (6) the people’s appearance and behavior, (7) the people’s demographic information, and (8) the people’s interactions with one another. While not exhaustive, this list identifies types of descriptive field notes that are critical to the analysis and writing stages of research.
Reflective field notes, unlike descriptive field notes, record the thoughts that researchers have about their own engagement with research—the notes concerning how researchers interpret what is being observed. This interpretation can include insights, feelings, and associations. Reflective field notes should address any significant bias in researchers regarding their handling of data. In addition to tracking reactions and dispositions, reflective field notes should address why the reactions and dispositions are surfacing in the first place.
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