POLSCI 3N06 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Naturalistic Observation, Group Dynamics, Ethnography
5 Dec 2015
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Political science 3n06 2015 lecture 9a field research. Interviewing is one type of method that can reveal how people see the world: their attitudes, beliefs, actions, and characteristics. However, both structured and unstructured interviewing rely on a somewhat artificial social context for exploring the lived reality of interviewees. The interview (whether one-on-one or focus group) is itself a social context one that generates answers that are not necessarily generalizable to other social contexts. What people say in the interview context may not reflect what they think and do in the real world. So for maximum ecological validity: to develop a naturalistic understanding of social life. Field research involves going out into the field and directly observing social life. The field is any social field that you are interested in understanding. The key is to find a social space and occupy it so that it can be observed.
