Talk:Field research/Archive 1

Merge proposal
This should be merged into field work. --The Wild Falcon 16:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Definitely. The terms are so closely related, there's no use for two articles. Besides, field work is in much better shape than its counterpart. In short, merge. - Mtmelendez (Talk 20:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Not so sure. Yes, the terms are closely related, but the definitions presented are very different. "Field Research" is about marketing research, and "Fieldwork" is about field research in the physical sciences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.53.183.69 (talk) 01:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge The academic use of the term field work can be expanded to include the more common business and marketing term "field research".  I don't see any real difference between, for instance, academic sociology "field work" and business marketing "field research". I suggest they be treated as synonyms unless someone can clearly establish otherwise. --Busy Stubber 00:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Not MergeField research originated in anthropology and it has a large academic application and is a field or methodology that is greatly studied outside of business applications. Lets expand this article in that context and not merge it. I am cleaning it up because it was a mess when I found it this year. --Pete (talk) 04:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment: there is also field study. This can be confusing... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 06:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Support Field research and field work are often used interchangeably by researchers. I am not aware of any academic differences with respect to the usage of either term. Even if there are, it is not fundamental and so so we don't need two separate articles on the same subject. I suggest we merge them all. Make field research the main article, and make field work and field study redirects to field research. danielkueh (talk) 20:02, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I completed the merger. The term field research is also used in the natural sciences. danielkueh (talk) 20:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

== I like the information you included on how to develop notes from jot notes to field notes.Zakdavid18 (talk) 20:44, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Expansion of article
A lot of information has recently been added to this article. I have yet to go through them. But I did notice that certain sections contained long quotes by various individuals. I am not against quotes per se, but they do make the article unnecessarily long, and may even give undue weight to certain sections or individuals. I haven't had time to go through the newly added content, but I suspect that quite a bit of it needs to be cut back. danielkueh (talk) 22:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree this looks less than optimal on a quick glance - it seems they confuse field research with particpant observation throughout. The text is also densely formatted, unwikified and very difficult to read.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have trimmed it down considerably. It is not that great but it is a start. danielkueh (talk) 03:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The sociology section should be expanded beyond just Bourdieau. Many classics of sociology have always incorporated fieldwork: Zorbaugh's Gold Coast and the Slum (1929) and other early studies in the chicago school were largely ethnographic, as were later classics like Goffman's Asylums (1956). Making the sociology section entirely about Bourdieau is misleading, because a) he did not start writing until much later (i.e. the 1960s) and b) only Bourdieau's early work really involves fieldwork. I'm not sure what justifies his centrality in this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.69.9.122 (talk) 20:44, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. I think the section should not be about Bourdieau. It should be about the specific methodologies used by sociologist when they conduct field research. Got any ideas? danielkueh (talk) 03:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The expansion and editing of this article is part of a class project. I have reformatted the layout and added several new headers and sub-headers. In the next couple of weeks, I will be adding more data to the added sections and fleshing out the layout. The object of this page, in my opinion, is to provide a general overview of field research, and more specifically, concentrate on writing field notes. Please feel free to go to my talk page and give suggestions for this page or for the Participant Observation page, which I will also be working on. (M.devia.psych. (talk) 20:30, 25 September 2012 (UTC))
 * I think providing a broad overview is a good idea. However, rather than insert headers first followed by text later on, I recommend that you create a sandbox page and write out whatever it is that you would like to add this page. I also recommend getting as many high quality sources as possible. Thanks again for doing this. I am looking forward to seeing more good work. Cheers. danielkueh (talk) 21:33, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, I reverted the deletion of the history section. I think it is useful for this article to have one. Nevertheless, feel free to edit its content. I also removed the empty subheaders for the time being. Until there is content, there is no point putting them there. danielkueh (talk) 05:06, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback. This is my first time doing something like this on a site like Wikipedia for an Introductory Qualitative Research course. I appreciate your understanding as I get used to working on this site. I understand why you added back the history section, but I was in the process of doing some editing. It was my mistake to take it out completely. Also, I reverted the headers and subheaders before reading your comment/justification on this talk page and subsequently on my own talk page. Either way, I thank you for your feedback and will most assuredly take it into account while doing further work on these pages(M.devia.psych. (talk) 14:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)).
 * No worries. Have fun! danielkueh (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

The expansion and editing of this article is part of a class project. I have added information on four types of field notes. Previously, there was simply a brief description of what field notes are, but it did not go into great detail. The page, in my opinion, needs more information on kinds of field notes as these are a key part of carrying out field research. (Anson1492 (talk) 06:36, 4 October 2012 (UTC))

=I, along with my classmate, edited the Conducting field research section. We removed the second little paragraph due to lack of citations and disjointed content. The information, at least the manner in which it was presented, did not further the knowledge of this topic. We do not think that the information is bad, it just needs to be cited and presented in a clear form. M.devia.psych. (talk) 20:10, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I might suggest changing the "Field research across different disciplines" heading be changed to "Practices" and then each area be given a lower level heading with the field workers added at the bottom of each area of expertise as a "for more information see:". Would make an easier read. Anbingham (21:42, 4 October 2012 (UTC))

This is coming along well. The expansion of the Field Notes section is a good contribution. My questions and suggestions for improvement are: 1) Organize the Field Notes section more - bullet points may be a better way to convey this information. 2) Flush out the Field Notes section more. 3) You need to incorporate more authors into your section about Field Research in Sociology 4) You need to address several of the ethical issues I raised on the related page on participate observation - chose which page they should be developed on and then link to it. This needs to have some discussion of ethics. 5) You may also want to incorporate common problems and solutions while conducting Field Research Heather Adams (talk) 19:03, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

This article is very informative and reads well. Some of the material is difficult to take in due to large amount of text. It may be helpful to add in a table briefly summarizing the various types of field notes. I would also suggest the addition of bullet points in sections that have lengthy amounts of information. In addition it may be a good idea to add in steps for conducting field research as I am not familiar with this topic and would find it extremely helpful. --Nasachs (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I added a chart for kinds of field notes in order to organize the material in an easy-to-read format. (Anson1492 (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2012 (UTC))

I added another example of quality field research under the heading Sociology. I understand that the information is minimal. However, I'm providing it in the hope that other authors will continue to build on it. (Anson1492 (talk) 15:05, 11 October 2012 (UTC))

Instructor Notes
Overall looking quite good! You need to:  include better citations in your section on different types of field notes.  you also need to address the concerns I raised above about ethical issues along with common problems and solutions  Heather Adams (talk) 23:36, 14 November 2012 (UTC)