Field Research
Instructions
This assignment is to be submitted to your tutor via postal mail, including a
printout of any text components, a hard copy of a photo album, a CD with
other visual material, or a DVD with any video material. If you would prefer
to submit your work electronically, please contact your tutur to see if such
arrangements can be made.
Do not begin your fieldwork until the ethics clearance has been granted
(Assignment 3).
You may choose from the following three options for your field research
assignment:
observation
an interview
and/or visual documentation
You will need to define a research problem or topic that you will address with this
fieldwork assignment. This assignment will require an introduction and explanation
of what the project is, and then a report presenting results (this includes a transcript
for an interview) and analyzing them.
To make sure that your project topic is feasible and appropriate, discuss the topic
and methods with your tutor before submitting the ethics proposal. And please,
remember that you might have to wait several weeks for clearance through the
student project ethics review. Please allow time for the review, and remember that
you must not begin your field research prior to receiving ethics clearance.
Observation Option
Define a research problem that can be addressed through observation. Please
review proposed methods for recording and analyzing observational data with your
tutor. Most likely you will want to do photography or video as part of this
assignment, to provide a record that can be analyzed, or to illustrate significant
aspects of your observational study.
Often, observation takes place in public places, such as parks or malls, where the
observer simply records information about people and their actions without
speaking to them. You will have to obtain consent to do the observation if it is in a
location such as a school, and if you record information visually you will have to
obtain informed consent from people you photograph, or if you work with children
ANTH 402 Assignment 5 2
(for example, observing play behaviour on a playground), you will have to obtain
permission from caregivers or teachers.
Assignment
You will turn in your notes, drawings, photos, or video footage, accompanied by a
report which analyses the observational data, explaining themes or regularities in
the data, and showing how the observations relate to your research problem or
question. What inferences can you draw from your observations? What future
research directions do they suggest? How did you respond to the fieldwork
experience? What have you learned that might make another observation more
effective?
Interview Option
The interview should be about an hour in length. You can interview anyone—a
fellow student, a relative, an elder, a friend—and the interview can be on any topic
that interests you. For the purposes of this class, you are strongly advised to try to
avoid anything too controversial. That could cause delays in your ethics review
while the committee makes sure that you are giving adequate consideration to
protecting the rights of the person you interview. Your interview can be related to
your research area, but does not have to be. The main point is to gain practice in the
process of interviewing and an understanding of the dynamics and technical
considerations of that process.
You will be required to make an audio or video recording of the interview so that
you can do an interview transcript. You do not have to turn in the recording to your
tutor. Recording an interview gives a sense of what that process involves (the “howto”
part), what kinds of problems can arise, and what is preserved in the recorded
interview.
Do not transcribe more than an hour of recording for this course, because it may
take up to 10 hours to transcribe a one-hour recording, depending on your skills at
transcription and typing. If your interview goes longer and is on a topic that you
want to pursue for future research, you can work on the rest of the recording on
your own or as part of a future research project. Use the methods presented in the
section on transcription. The assignment requires a literal transcript (which will
look something like the script of a play) typed up on the computer, not a summary.
However, it is not necessary to indicate every “uh” or false start for
our purposes. If someone gives you terms in Cree or another Native language, please
do your best to represent these words in your transcript.
Assignment
Once you have your transcript, read it over to identify themes, and prepare a short
summary of the interview. You will submit:
your transcript accompanied by interview notes, if you took any
ANTH 402 Assignment 5 3
a short report which will contain: (1) an introduction which explains the
location, date, topic and circumstances of the interview, and who the
participants were (yourself and the interviewee or interviewees), and (2) a
summary of the contents of the interview in one or two paragraphs
a section which identifies and briefly discusses the themes you identified in
the interview
Visual Anthropology Project
Define a research problem or subject. Fill out the ethics form. Remember, you will
need informed consent from participants to do your visual ethnography project.
Examples of visual ethnography projects could include documenting:
a traditional skill such as making baskets or sewing moccasins
processing fish or game to make traditional foods
cooking a culturally relevant meal
Other examples would be photographing:
housing styles
types of gardens
traditional clothing or dance styles
You may need to combine this with some interviewing to help interpret the visual
materials you collect.
Assignment
You will submit your video or your photo album accompanied by explanatory
material that explains the process of producing the video or album, the problem
addressed by the material, and your analysis of the resultant material.