Field Studies | Guide, Techniques & Steps

Introduction

Conducting field research is a mainstay in qualitative research, particularly in inquiries where observation or other data collection in a natural environment is preferred to experimental or lab research. Research methods common to field studies include observations, interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

In this article, we'll look at the role of field research in the social sciences, weigh the benefits and considerations for conducting research in real-world situations, and discuss research methods that are commonly used to collect data in a natural setting.

What is field research?

Simply put, field research includes any research study that is conducted in a real-world, natural setting. A field study is conducted outside of the confines of a laboratory or other closed environment that may be used to filter out any variables that could interfere with the research. Rather than control for confounding variables, conducting field research carries the acknowledgment that such influences cannot or should not be ignored if the goal is to fully capture a more comprehensive understanding of the concept or phenomenon under examination.

Take an observational study examining cultural practices during a religious ceremony, for example. A researcher may take notes on any number of things that are present or take place during the ceremony. They can document the actual processes of the ceremony, the physical environment in which the ceremony takes place, the people in attendance, and the words uttered by those participants conducting the ceremony. However, there are countless other factors that might influence the event. In this case, the researcher taking notes documents all the potentially consequential developments, from mistakes made during the event to bad weather affecting the attendance. These are not considered to be confounding influences but developments that more fully contextualize the phenomenon being documented.

Conducting a field study involves any of several different methods, including observations, interviews, and surveys. The data collected from a field study is often unstructured and requires organization after data collection, but has the potential to accommodate a wide range of research inquiries within the social sciences where experimental research methods are otherwise incapable.

Why conduct field research?

Some research inquiries simply aren't suited for a closed, sterile environment like a laboratory. Cultural practices, social interactions, and other aspects of everyday life are impossible to reduce to a small number of variables without losing the granular detail that provides the necessary thick description of socially constructed concepts.

That said, note that field research isn't restricted to social scientists. Geologists who are interested in volcanic activity are likely to go into the field to study active volcanoes, while astronomers may often travel to other countries and observatories to identify stars and other stellar phenomena that may not be visible from their own part of the world. Essentially, any researcher whose object of inquiry can't simply be bottled up and placed in a lab will find a field study more suitable to addressing their research question.

This is not to say that experimental research does not play a role. Experiments are often useful when researchers want to confirm or challenge an existing theory. Confirmatory research questions, as a result, benefit from a controlled environment with as little influence from confounding variables as possible, leaving only the independent and dependent variables representing parts of a theory to interact with each other. This kind of research inquiry is useful when researchers have a formal theory that should be tested and the appropriate means to test it. As a result, experiments are an important part of research in areas such as education, psychology, and communication studies, where the appropriate level of theoretical development warrants testing by experimental or quantitative research methods.

That said, in exploratory research inquiries, a field study is often the more appropriate means for generating new theories and collecting data that may yield unanticipated insights useful for further research. Regardless of the research discipline, employing field research methods is oftentimes a good way to learn something new about a concept or phenomenon with little established theoretical coherence.

Advantages of field research

There are two main dimensions that separate field research from other forms of research. In a nutshell, any research question that pursues an exploratory inquiry or benefits from naturalistic data will likely tend toward field research.

Potential for exploratory research

There are limits to experimental research methods or any method that doesn't rely on primary data. Closed experiments are useful when the researcher wants to test a theory but are seldom used to generate a new theory or contextualize an existing one through insights that they haven't yet anticipated.

To address this task, researchers conduct field research when they want to identify novel aspects of a concept or phenomenon. Analytical approaches like thematic analysis, grounded theory, and phenomenology rely on naturalistic data that is collected in the field, capturing a depth of information that experimental research is often not designed to perceive.

Authenticity of data

Research participants tend to respond differently to experimental and naturalistic research methods. A driving test on a closed track, for example, may tell us fundamental things about someone's ability to drive a vehicle, but it may not be able to give us enough data about how they might react under conditions that a real-world situation can more adequately provide. Given this premise, a field study where a researcher observes how a driver responds to traffic, road conditions, and inclement weather can provide a greater degree of contextualization about their overall ability.

Keep in mind that a field study requires thoughtful planning and adequate preparation to ensure that the data collected comprehensively and accurately captures the phenomenon being studied. Those who conduct field research should account for things such as social desirability bias and observer effect when interacting with research participants to fully contextualize the nature of the insights drawn from the field. That said, the collection of naturalistic data can ultimately prove useful for generating scientific knowledge that is most relevant to the context being studied.

Disadvantages of field research

On the other side of things, keep in mind that field research has its tradeoffs. Compared to experiments, field studies can be more cumbersome to conduct in terms of the data that is collected and how it is collected.

Unstructured data

Data is relatively straightforward to collect in a lab setting. In addition, the closed environment of lab research ensures a level of consistency across the data that is more challenging to establish than in a field study. Conversely, any research method that collects naturalistic data will require researchers to structure the data through coding or reorganization to facilitate data analysis.

Moreover, the form that qualitative data takes depends on the research method used; data collected from direct observations often take the form of field notes, while interviews and focus groups will produce transcripts. Other research methods can produce raw data such as images, videos, and audio recordings, requiring some form of organization before the data can be rigorously analyzed.

Feasibility

All research has its challenges, but going into the field presents particular challenges that affect the feasibility of a field study. Ethnography can be time-consuming, surveys can be expensive to distribute, and interviews require transcription. Whatever data is produced, researchers need to devote time to coding the data so it can be analyzed for insights.

For logistical and ethical reasons, field research also depends on the cooperation of those whom the researcher encounters while in the field. In many cases, this requires the skill of establishing rapport within the environment being observed. Many ethnographic studies are only made possible after the researcher has taken the time to foster relationships with and obtain informed consent from research participants before they collect data.

Commonly used field research methods

Researchers rely on various data collection methods to develop a better understanding of a research topic that is best captured while in the field. All of these methods produce some form of data that requires structuring through coding.

Observations

Observing phenomena is a central component of naturalistic inquiry. Rather than try to recreate or simulate something in an experiment in a laboratory, researchers enter the field to conduct direct observation and see what it looks like in its natural environment.

Ethnographic researchers go one step further and rely on participant observation to capture data within a particular community or culture, given the assumption that experiencing a phenomenon can often be profoundly more insightful than watching it from the outside. Especially in social anthropology, this kind of observation can occur over extended periods of time to observe people and gather detailed information about behaviors, actions, and relationships.

Participant observations are often recorded in field notes. Proper organization of field notes yields an ethnographic record that can provide a sense of how the researcher experiences the culture they are studying and interacts with the participants they encounter.

Interviews and focus groups

Qualitative interviews are the main method for gathering data about participants' perspectives and knowledge. Structured or semi-structured interviews are often designed with a certain set of questions beforehand to directly address the given research question, while unstructured, informal interviews can capture previously unanticipated insights from insider participants. The latter is especially important in ethnographic research when used to triangulate participants' utterances with their actions captured during observations.

Focus groups are similar to interviews but are conducted with multiple participants, oftentimes to gather insights about not only what people think but also how they interact with each other on a given topic. Data from both research methods takes the form of raw audio or video that researchers analyze for facial expressions, gestures, and other forms of non-verbal communication, as well as transcripts to document research participants' utterances.

Surveys

Collecting data from surveys allows researchers to approach research participants in their natural setting and gather responses to a standardized set of questions at scale. Surveys or questionnaires can be conducted in person or remotely to reach people in a given research context.

In-person surveys can be especially useful in field research for the ability to capture research participants' reactions to questions. Moreover, the responses from surveys can inform real-world applications as actionable insights are identified.