FIELD RESEARCH AND FOCUS GROUP RESEARCHwrite “Anthony argued with Sam and Jason. He
said that the Cubs would win next week because
they traded for a new shortstop, Chiappetta. He also
said that the team was better than the Mets, who
he thought had inferior infielders. He cited last
week’s game where the Cubs won against Boston
by 8 to 3.” You should note who was present, what
happened, where it occurred, when, and under what
circumstances. New researchers may not take notes
because “nothing important happened.” An experi-
enced researcher knows that events when “nothing
happened” can reveal a lot. For example, members
may express feelings and organize experience into
folk categories even in trivial conversations.
A useful way to think of time in the field
comes from Zerubavel (1981), who looked at the
rhythms of social life and argued that the coordi-
nation of social activities is based on the organiza-
tion of time.
Four temporal patterns that you may try to
notice and record in your direct observations notes
are the following: (1) sequential structure—what
comes first, second, third and so on—the order in
which events happen (out of order, before versus
after); (2) duration—the length of time of social
events (too long, too short); (3) temporal locations—
social meaning of certain times of the day, week,
month, year (too early, too late); and (4) reoccur-
ance—the repetition of certain events or a cycle of
time that has been attached to social norms (too
often, not enough).
3.Inference notes.You should listen to mem-
bers in order to “climb into their skin” or “walk in
their shoes.”^41 This involves a three-step process:
listen without applying analytical categories; com-
pare what you hear to what you heard at other times
and to what others say; and then apply your own
interpretation to infer or figure out what the infor-
mation means. In ordinary interaction, we do all
three steps simultaneously and jump quickly to
our own inferences. In field research, you learn to
look and listen without inferring or imposing an
interpretation. Your observations without infer-
ences go into direct observation notes.
You can record inferences in a separate section
that is keyed to direct observations. We never see
social relationships, emotions, or meaning. We see
specific physical actions and hear words, then use
background cultural knowledge, clues from the
context, and what is done or said to assign social
meaning. For example, we do not see love or anger;
we see and hear specific actions (red face, loud
voice, wild gestures, obscenities) and draw infer-
ences from them (the person is angry).
We constantly infer social meaning on the
basis of what we see and hear—but not always
correctly. For example, my niece visited me and
accompanied me to a store to buy a kite. The clerk
at the cash register smiled and asked her whether
she and her “daddy” (looking at me) were going to
fly the kite that day. The clerk observed our inter-
action and then inferred a father/daughter, not an
uncle/niece, relationship. She saw and heard a male
adult and a female child, but she inferred the social
meaning incorrectly. You want to keep inferred
meaning separate from direct observation because
the meaning of actions is not always self-evident.
Sometimes people try to deceive others. For example,
an unrelated couple register at a motel as Mr. and
Mrs. Smith. More frequently, social behavior is
ambiguous or multiple meanings are possible. For
example, I see a White male and female, both in
their late twenties, get out of a car and enter a
restaurant together. They sit at a table, order a meal,
and talk with serious expressions in hushed tones,
sometimes leaning forward to hear each other. As
they get up to leave, the woman, who has a sad
facial expression and appears ready to cry, is briefly
hugged by the male. They then leave together. Did
I witness a couple breaking up, two friends dis-
cussing a third, two people trying to decide what to
do because they have discovered that their spouses
are having an affair with each other, or a brother
and sister whose father just died? The separation
of inferenceallows multiple meanings to arise on
rereading direct observation notes. If you record
inferred meaning without separation, you lose other
possible meanings. Tjora (2006:433) observed thatSeparation of inference A process by which a field
researcher writes direct observation notes in a way that
keeps what was observed separate from what was
inferred or believed to have occurred.