Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

Understanding Field Research
The Field Research Interview
Data Quality

Ethical Dilemmas of Field Research

Focus Group Research

Conclusion

Field Research and

Focus Group Research

Genderis an identy and performance that we reproduce and recreate through daily

interactions. Marriageis a gendered relationship, and weddings are ritualized events with

clear norms to reinforce traditional masculinity and femininity. Likewise, the bridal shower

is gendered. The word bridalrather than weddingshower indicates that it is a woman’s

ritual. A man’s complementary prewedding ritual has been the bachelor party. In the past

decade, a new social form, the mixed or coed bridal shower, has spread. Montemurro

(2005) studied mixed and traditional bridal showers. She conducted in-depth interviews

with 51 women using snowball sampling. The women had been guests of honor, planned,

hosted, or attended more than 280 bridal showers in 5 years before the interview, but she

focused on 148 in the previous year. She also attended five bridal showers as a participant

observer; three were traditional (all female) and two were mixed. She noted who attended

the shower (age, gender, and relationships), what happened in sequence, what gifts were

given, and how attendees acted and felt. In a traditional bridal shower, men were peripheral

or absent, together in another area of the home from where the shower was held or in

another place. This signified the shower as exclusively feminine space. Many women

reported being bored in the traditional shower. Montemurro identified three types of mixed

showers: fiancé-only, couples, and groom-centered (a “groomal shower”). Mixed gender

showers tended to be a different time (weekend evening) and more informal than traditional

showers. They were likely to serve alcohol and not make gift opening the central or

exclusive activity. Also, gifts were more varied and less exclusively feminine at mixed than

at bridal showers. Gender roles were distinct at mixed showers but tended to be egalitarian.

While women-only showers retained formality and expectations that women “do”

femininity, mixed showers tended to be lavish and oriented toward status display more

than gender transformation.

Field research is the study of people acting in the natural courses of their daily lives.

The fieldworker ventures into the worlds of others in order to learn firsthand about

how they live, how they talk and behave, and what captivates and distresses them....

It is also seen as a method of study whose practitioners try to understand the

meanings that activities observed have for those engaging in them.

—Robert Emerson,Contemporary Field Research,p. 1