Field research

Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside the laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches as well as methods used in field research make adjustments to across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct field research may simply observe animals interacting with their environments, whereas social scientists conducting field research may interview or observe people in their natural environments to learn their languages, folklore, together with social structures.

Field research involves a range of well-defined, although variable, methods: informal interviews, direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective discussions, analyses of personal documents presentation within the group, self-analysis, results from activities undertaken off- or on-line, and life-histories. Although the method generally is characterized as qualitative research, it may and often does include quantitative dimensions.

Conducting field research

The brand of results obtained from field research depends on the data gathered in the field. The data in turn, depend upon the field worker, his or her level of involvement, and ability to see and visualize things that other individuals visiting the area of examine may fail to notice. The more open researchers are to new ideas, concepts, and things which they may non do seen in their own culture, the better will be the absorption of those ideas. Better grasping of such fabric means a better apprehension of the forces of culture operating in the area and the ways they conform the lives of the people under study. Social scientists i.e. anthropologists, social psychologists, etc. have always been taught to be free from ethnocentrism i.e. the conviction in the superiority of one's own ethnic group, when conducting all type of field research.

When humans themselves are the covered of study, protocols must be devised to reduce the risk of observer bias and the acquisition of too theoretical or idealized explanations of the workings of a culture. Participant observation, data collection, and survey research are examples of field research methods, in contrast to what is often called experimental or lab research.