Field Research: Navigating Uncharted Waters

Last Tuesday’s Core 2 class dealt mostly with updating everyone on our research process and discussing the results of our excursion out to the bowling alley the week before (see previous post, Core 2 Heads to the Bowling Alley, for an in-depth look at my fieldnotes and transcription).

We also discussed several of the transcription methods covered in Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert . Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw.  An ethnographer’s task, through “a deeper immersion in other’s world,” is to discover the fluidity of other’s lives and enhance his sensitivity to interaction and process” (p. 2), and then present his experiences in a way others can easily understand through fieldnote transcritions.  In order to produce an engaging and detailed  transcription, it is necessary for the ethnographer to take detailed and extensive fieldnotes of their observations and experiences that “reconstruct each moment from selected details which they remembered or had jotted down” (p. 67).

The trip to the bowling alley also gave me the opportunity to practice my interviewing skills, which as I mentioned in Building Bridges: A Guide to Postmodern Interviewing, I was concerned about.  I strived to keep my nerves in check and just chat with the bowlers rather than grill them for the information I needed in order to complete my assignment, and I was able to balance between actively observing what was happening around me while interacting with the environment as well.

Now comes the real test as I plan more trips and interviews (a schedule of people and places for the interviews to follow) for my ghost hunting research.  The bowling alley was a trial run, and now the real investigation is taking shape.  Wish me luck!