what is the importance of field research

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What is Field Research: Definition, Methods, Examples and Advantages

What is Field Research?

Field research is defined as a qualitative method of data collection that aims to observe, interact and understand people while they are in a natural environment. For example, nature conservationists observe behavior of animals in their natural surroundings and the way they react to certain scenarios. In the same way, social scientists conducting field research may conduct interviews or observe people from a distance to understand how they behave in a social environment and how they react to situations around them.

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Field research encompasses a diverse range of social research methods including direct observation, limited participation, analysis of documents and other information, informal interviews, surveys etc. Although field research is generally characterized as qualitative research, it often involves multiple aspects of quantitative research in it.

Field research typically begins in a specific setting although the end objective of the study is to observe and analyze the specific behavior of a subject in that setting. The cause and effect of a certain behavior, though, is tough to analyze due to presence of multiple variables in a natural environment. Most of the data collection is based not entirely on cause and effect but mostly on correlation. While field research looks for correlation, the small sample size makes it difficult to establish a causal relationship between two or more variables.

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Methods of Field Research

Field research is typically conducted in 5 distinctive methods. They are:

• Direct Observation

In this method, the data is collected via an observational method or subjects in a natural environment. In this method, the behavior or outcome of situation is not interfered in any way by the researcher. The advantage of direct observation is that it offers contextual data on people management , situations, interactions and the surroundings. This method of field research is widely used in a public setting or environment but not in a private environment as it raises an ethical dilemma.

• Participant Observation

In this method of field research, the researcher is deeply involved in the research process, not just purely as an observer, but also as a participant. This method too is conducted in a natural environment but the only difference is the researcher gets involved in the discussions and can mould the direction of the discussions. In this method, researchers live in a comfortable environment with the participants of the research design , to make them comfortable and open up to in-depth discussions.

• Ethnography

Ethnography is an expanded observation of social research and social perspective and the cultural values of an  entire social setting. In ethnography, entire communities are observed objectively. For example,  if a researcher would like to understand how an Amazon tribe lives their life and operates, he/she may chose to observe them or live amongst them and silently observe their day-to-day behavior.

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• Qualitative Interviews

Qualitative interviews are close-ended questions that are asked directly to the research subjects. The qualitative interviews could be either informal and conversational, semi-structured, standardized and open-ended or a mix of all the above three. This provides a wealth of data to the researcher that they can sort through. This also helps collect relational data. This method of field research can use a mix of one-on-one interviews, focus groups and text analysis .

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A case study research is an in-depth analysis of a person, situation or event. This method may look difficult to operate, however, it is one of the simplest ways of conducting research as it involves a deep dive and thorough understanding the data collection methods and inferring the data.

Steps in Conducting Field Research

Due to the nature of field research, the magnitude of timelines and costs involved, field research can be very tough to plan, implement and measure. Some basic steps in the management of field research are:

• Build the Right Team: To be able to conduct field research, having the right team is important. The role of the researcher and any ancillary team members is very important and defining the tasks they have to carry out with defined relevant milestones is important. It is important that the upper management too is vested in the field research for its success.
• Recruiting People for the Study: The success of the field research depends on the people that the study is being conducted on. Using sampling methods , it is important to derive the people that will be a part of the study.
• Data Collection Methodology: As spoken in length about above, data collection methods for field research are varied. They could be a mix of surveys, interviews, case studies and observation. All these methods have to be chalked out and the milestones for each method too have to be chalked out at the outset. For example, in the case of a survey, the survey design is important that it is created and tested even before the research begins.
• Site Visit: A site visit is important to the success of the field research and it is always conducted outside of traditional locations and in the actual natural environment of the respondent/s. Hence, planning a site visit alongwith the methods of data collection is important.
• Data Analysis: Analysis of the data that is collected is important to validate the premise of the field research and  decide the outcome of the field research.
• Communicating Results: Once the data is analyzed, it is important to communicate the results to the stakeholders of the research so that it could be actioned upon.

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Field Research Notes

Keeping an ethnographic record is very important in conducting field research. Field notes make up one of the most important aspects of the ethnographic record. The process of field notes begins as the researcher is involved in the observational research process that is to be written down later.

Types of Field Research Notes

The four different kinds of field notes are:

• Job Notes: This method of taking notes is while the researcher is in the study. This could be in close proximity and in open sight with the subject in study. The notes here are short, concise and in condensed form that can be built on by the researcher later. Most researchers do not prefer this method though due to the fear of feeling that the respondent may not take them seriously.
• Field Notes Proper: These notes are to be expanded on immediately after the completion of events. The notes have to be detailed and the words have to be as close to possible as the subject being studied.
• Methodological Notes: These notes contain methods on the research methods used by the researcher, any new proposed research methods and the way to monitor their progress. Methodological notes can be kept with field notes or filed separately but they find their way to the end report of a study.
• Journals and Diaries: This method of field notes is an insight into the life of the researcher. This tracks all aspects of the researchers life and helps eliminate the Halo effect or any research bias that may have cropped up during the field research.

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Reasons to Conduct Field Research

Field research has been commonly used in the 20th century in the social sciences. But in general, it takes a lot of time to conduct and complete, is expensive and in a lot of cases invasive. So why then is this commonly used and is preferred by researchers to validate data? We look at 4 major reasons:

• Overcoming lack of data: Field research resolves the major issue of gaps in data. Very often, there is limited to no data about a topic in study, especially in a specific environment analysis . The research problem might be known or suspected but there is no way to validate this without primary research and data. Conducting field research helps not only plug-in gaps in data but collect supporting material and hence is a preferred research method of researchers.
• Understanding context of the study: In many cases, the data collected is adequate but field research is still conducted. This helps gain insight into the existing data. For example, if the data states that horses from a stable farm generally win races because the horses are pedigreed and the stable owner hires the best jockeys. But conducting field research can throw light into other factors that influence the success like quality of fodder and care provided and conducive weather conditions.
• Increasing the quality of data: Since this research method uses more than one tool to collect data, the data is of higher quality. Inferences can be made from the data collected and can be statistically analyzed via the triangulation of data.
• Collecting ancillary data: Field research puts the researchers in a position of localized thinking which opens them new lines of thinking. This can help collect data that the study didn’t account to collect.

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Examples of Field Research

Some examples of field research are:

• Decipher social metrics in a slum Purely by using observational methods and in-depth interviews, researchers can be part of a community to understand the social metrics and social hierarchy of a slum. This study can also understand the financial independence and day-to-day operational nuances of a slum. The analysis of this data can provide an insight into how different a slum is from structured societies.
• U nderstand the impact of sports on a child’s development This method of field research takes multiple years to conduct and the sample size can be very large. The data analysis of this research provides insights into how the kids of different geographical locations and backgrounds respond to sports and the impact of sports on their all round development.
• Study animal migration patterns Field research is used extensively to study flora and fauna. A major use case is scientists monitoring and studying animal migration patterns with the change of seasons. Field research helps collect data across years and that helps draw conclusions about how to safely expedite the safe passage of animals.

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Advantages of Field Research

The advantages of field research are:

• It is conducted in a real-world and natural environment where there is no tampering of variables and the environment is not doctored.
• Due to the study being conducted in a comfortable environment, data can be collected even about ancillary topics.
• The researcher gains a deep understanding into the research subjects due to the proximity to them and hence the research is extensive, thorough and accurate.

Disadvantages of Field Research

The disadvantages of field research are:

• The studies are expensive and time-consuming and can take years to complete.
• It is very difficult for the researcher to distance themselves from a bias in the research study.
• The notes have to be exactly what the researcher says but the nomenclature is very tough to follow.
• It is an interpretive method and this is subjective and entirely dependent on the ability of the researcher.
• In this method, it is impossible to control external variables and this constantly alters the nature of the research.

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Home ▶ Publications

Getting to the Source: The Importance of Field Research

An academic and intellectual decline is inevitable without a post-pandemic revival of fieldwork.

By: Alastair Reed, Ph.D. ;  Boglarka Bozsogi

Publication Type: Analysis

Travel restrictions and social distancing practices put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have largely ground field research to a halt. Fieldwork plays an essential but often underappreciated role in both understanding violent extremism and developing policy responses to it. It is vital, therefore, that funders and policymakers support the return of such important work in a post-pandemic world.

Fieldwork brings important local perspectives to the fore, helping to contextualize conflicts within their wider ecosystems and societal and cultural realities. This forces researchers to challenge their preconceptions and theoretical assumptions as they come face to face with the realities on the ground. And, perhaps most importantly, fieldwork brings to life the human dimension — the human suffering and resilience of the communities affected by violence and the motivations and drivers of the violent actors.

Without understanding the view from the ground, we will continue to struggle to understand violent extremism and develop effective policy responses. 

The Human Side

As many field researchers will admit, there is something about the smell and feel of a place that being on the ground provides and that reading reports and analyzing data cannot capture. On the ground, a researcher has the opportunity to diversify their primary sources and data. They can also better appreciate and absorb the context of the conflict. Without understanding the human side, the unique cultural and societal setting and the physical geography and climate, which together forge the contours within which the violence evolves, we can only have a partial understanding of the conflict ecosystem.

“The value of engagement with human beings cannot be underestimated,” Haroro Ingram, a senior research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University and member of the RESOLVE Research Advisory Council, told a recent RESOLVE Forum session.

Absorbing the context can help the researcher understand and interpret the collected data, but also to reinterpret what they learned from desk-based studies. The subjective experience of sharing is humbling; it offers an intellectual appreciation not only of the complexity on the ground but also of the breadth and depth of the literature and its gaps.

Researchers are only human and bring along preconceived perceptions, biases and assumptions — implicit or explicit — internalized from academic literature and media reports. Seeing the realities on the ground forces them to confront these preconceived assumptions and challenge, reinterpret or discard them. Theoretical explanations and conceptual analysis can only be tested when applied against the world they purport to explain. Field research gives us a chance to improve and develop our understanding, and a chance to glimpse the unknown unknowns, the missing factors that we cannot see or conceive from our academic ivory towers.

It is easy to overlook the human side — the victims of violence and conflict-affected communities that bear the brunt of the human tragedy of extremism — when researching a conflict from a distance. Observing and talking to the most affected communities reminds us of the horrors of war and the depths of depravity humanity can sink to. However, it also brings to light the human side of violent actors on all sides, an insight into the motivations and drivers that led them down the path to violence. Conflicts are ultimately about people; attempts to understand conflicts need to start with understanding the people that drive them. To do that, field researchers need to adopt a methodical approach, informed by the literature, and ensure their research and findings are triangulated, ethical and trustworthy.

“Mindanao, in the last 50 years, has experienced cycles of failed peace processes that international actors tried to support with a top-down understanding, often from a distance, in the absence of genuine bottom-up, grassroot perspectives,” said Ingram, who focuses his field research on the Middle East and Southeast Asia. “Since the most important actors in the grassroots population do not have electricity, let alone internet, the only effective outreach is getting to the source to build trust, engage with communities respectfully and learn of cultural subtleties through conversations. Collaborative effort, trust and the contribution to research can create actionable, nuanced and effective recommendations for policy and practice,” he added.

Contextual Understanding

Field research strengthens academic rigor, theories and methodologies, complements desk research and brings a different vantage point to understanding conflict. One constant risk in academic research is the tendency to be reductionist, and to focus on an isolated issue and miss the dynamic connections between it and its wider context. It can be appealing to zoom in on a particular violent extremist group and examine a singular aspect, such as ideology and group dynamics, rather than to see it as part of a complex ecosystem and dynamic processes. Conflict contexts often comprise multiple, interlinked armed actors, all influenced by and influencing each other. These contexts are further complicated by cross-cutting dynamics of ethnic, customary, kinship or religious dimensions.

Field research contextualizes the conflict and the issues that matter, helps understand drivers and motivations behind conflict actors and breaks free of embedded preconceptions. It can bring to life the unseen complexities: policemen fighting rebelling siblings, women fleeing insurgent cousins, parents losing children to armed groups, government officials persecuting family members as non-state actors. “People often said: ‘My brother joined that armed group, my cousin is in the police force,’” said Ingram, recalling conversations with locals in conflict areas that may seem, on the surface, to be absurd but that actually reflect a sober, clinical rational choice decision-making. Conflict ecosystems are invariably messy, counterintuitive and seemingly incomprehensible, yet remain the reality we seek to understand.

Sukanya Podder, defense studies senior lecturer at King’s College London and member of the RESOLVE Research Advisory Council, who also participated in the RESOLVE Forum session, conducted research in Mindanao, the Philippines, and Liberia where she focused on children and young people recruited into armed groups. Observing youth relationships with families and commanders in their communities, she was able to break free of preconceptions from media imagery and simplistic assumptions that children join community-based armed groups because they are drugged. Her fieldwork unearthed much more diverse motivations and choices: many children chose to join or decided to refrain of their own will.

Ethics and Safety

With any type of research, ethics and safety must be paramount. Fieldwork poses distinct challenges for each venue, context and participant. “Do no harm” should be the central principle of fieldwork planning to ensure the safety and integrity of researchers, respondents and their communities. Research fatigue is a growing issue that has negative implications on the quality of data. If respondents are wary about the benefits of research and are hesitant to participate, the authenticity of results is harder to determine. Researchers must be careful not to instrumentalize fieldwork and budget enough time and resources for in-depth quality research to produce authentic, reliable and valid data; this data should be periodically updated.

Getting approval from institutional review boards for fieldwork can often be challenging, and rightly so, but this rigor helps researchers address potential challenges and ensure the integrity of their research. While standards procedures, bureaucratic processes, reviews, clearances and preparations may seem taxing, they are indispensable for rich contributions of the highest integrity.  

Strengthening Research and Policy

The effectiveness and ultimate success — however we choose to measure it — of policy approaches to countering violent extremism depend on a thorough understanding of the phenomenon they try to address. Sound research should be the rock on which good policy is built. Podder’s research in West Africa has informed disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs with a nuanced understanding of the implications of different types of armed groups. Returnees from community-based armed groups or community defense groups found reintegration less problematic, as reconciliation could be locally administered through local, tribal judicial processes. Such findings from field research can avoid wasting money on programs that cannot yield the desired outcome.

Our understanding of violent extremism has benefitted from an interdisciplinary research field where each discipline and method, qualitative and quantitative, brings a new lens to gathering and analyzing data. Collectively, this cross-pollination of research methods has allowed us to see further than one approach alone ever could. Within a complementary and overlapping web of methods, fieldwork has an important but sometimes overlooked role to play. Without a post-pandemic revival of fieldwork, an academic and intellectual decline is inevitable.

Boglarka Bozsogi is executive coordination and network manager at the RESOLVE Network housed at USIP. 

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A guide to field studies

Last updated

18 April 2023

Reviewed by

Cathy Heath

Short on time? Get an AI generated summary of this article instead

Field studies allow researchers to observe and collect data in real-world settings. Unlike laboratory-based or traditional research methods, field studies enable researchers to investigate complex phenomena within their environment, providing a deeper understanding of the research context.

Researchers can use field studies to investigate a wide range of subjects, from the behavior of animals to the practices of businesses or the experiences of individuals in a particular setting.

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• What is a field study?

A field study is a research method that involves conducting observations and collecting data in a natural setting. This method includes observing, interviewing, and interacting with participants in their environment, such as a workplace, community, or natural habitat.

Field studies can take many forms, from ethnographic studies involving extended periods of observation and using an anthropological lens to shorter-term studies focusing on specific behaviors or events. Regardless of its form, a successful field study requires careful planning, preparation, and execution to ensure the data collected is valid and reliable.

• How to plan a field study

Planning a field study is a critical first step in ensuring successful research. Here are some steps to follow when preparing your field study:

1. Define your research question

When developing a good research question , you should make it clear, concise, and specific. It should also be open-ended, allowing for various possible answers rather than a simple yes or no response. Your research question should also be relevant to the broader field of study and contribute new knowledge to the existing literature.

Once you have a defined research question, identify the key variables you need to study and the data you need to collect. It might involve developing a hypothesis or research framework outlining the relationships between different variables and how you’ll measure them in your study.

2. Identify your research site

A research site is a location where you’ll conduct your study and collect data. Here are the types of research sites to consider when planning a field study:

Natural habitats: For environmental or ecological research, you may need to conduct your study in a natural habitat, such as a forest, wetland, or coral reef.

Communities : If your research relates to social or cultural factors, you may need to study a particular community, such as a neighborhood, village, or city.

Organizations : For questions relating to organizational behavior or management, your location will be in a business environment, like a nonprofit or government agency.

Events : If your research question relates to a particular event, you may need to conduct your study at that event, such as, at a protest, festival, or natural disaster.

Ensure your research site represents the population you're studying. For example, if you're exploring cultural beliefs, ensure the community represents the larger population and you have access to a diverse group of participants.

3. Determine your data collection methods

Choosing a suitable method will depend on the research question, the type of data needed, and the characteristics of the participants. Here are some commonly used data collection methods in field studies:

Interviews : You can collect data on people's experiences, perspectives, and attitudes. In some instances, you can use phone or online interviews.

Observations : This method involves watching and recording behaviors and interactions in a specific setting. 

Surveys : By using a survey , you can easily standardize and tailor the questions to provide answers for your research. Respondents can complete the survey in person, by mail, or online.

Document analysis : Organizational reports, letters, diaries, public records, policies, or social media posts can be analyzed to gain context. 

When selecting data collection methods, consider factors such as the availability of participants, the ethical considerations involved, and the resources needed to carry out each method. For example, conducting interviews may require more time and resources than administering a survey.

4. Obtain necessary permissions

Depending on the research location and the nature of the study, you may require permission from local authorities, organizations, or individuals before conducting your research. 

This process is vital when working with human or animal subjects and conducting research in sensitive or protected environments.

Here are some steps you can take to obtain the necessary permissions:

Identify the relevant authorities , including local governments, regulatory bodies, research institutions, or private organizations, to obtain permission for your research.

Reach out to the relevant authorities to explain the nature of your study. Be ready to hand out detailed information about your research. 

If you're conducting research with human participants, you must have their consent . You'll also need to ensure the participants have the right to withdraw from the study at any time.

Obtain necessary permits from regulatory bodies or local authorities. For example, if you're conducting research in a protected area, you may need a research permit from the relevant government agency.

The process of obtaining permissions can be time-consuming, and failure to obtain the necessary permits can lead to legal and ethical issues.

• Examples of field research

Researchers can apply field research to a wide range of disciplines and phenomena. Here are some examples of field research in different fields:

Anthropology : Anthropologists use field research methods to study different communities' social and cultural practices. For instance, an anthropologist might conduct participant observation in a remote community to understand their customs, beliefs, and practices.

Ecology : Ecologists use field research methods to learn the behavior of organisms and their interactions with the environment. For example, an ecologist might conduct field research on the behavior of birds in their natural habitat to understand their feeding habits, nesting patterns, and migration.

Sociology : Sociologists may use field research methods to study social behavior and interactions. For instance, a sociologist might conduct participant observation in a workplace to understand organizational culture and communication dynamics.

Geography : Geographers use field research methods to study different regions’ physical and human contexts. For example, a geographer might conduct field research on the impact of climate change on a particular ecosystem, such as a forest or wetland.

Psychology : Psychologists use field research methods to study human behavior in natural settings. For instance, a psychologist might conduct field research on the effects of stress on students in a school setting.

Education : Researchers studying education may use field research methods to study teaching and learning in real-world settings. For example, you could use field research to test the effectiveness of a new teaching method in a classroom setting.

By using field research methods, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of the natural world, human behavior, and social interaction theory and how they affect each other.

• Advantages of field research

Field research has several advantages over other research methods, including:

Authenticity : Field research conducted in natural settings allows researchers to observe and study real-life phenomena as it happens. This authenticity enhances the validity and accuracy of the data collected.

Flexibility : Field research methods are flexible and adaptable to different research contexts. Researchers can adjust their strategies to meet the specific needs of their research questions and participants and uncover new insights as the research unfolds.

Rich data : Field research provides rich and detailed data, often including contextual information that’s difficult to capture through other research methods. This depth of knowledge allows for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the research topic.

Novel insights : Field research can lead to discoveries that may not be possible with other research methods. Observing and studying phenomena in natural settings can provide unique perspectives and new understandings of complex issues.

Field research methods can enhance the quality and validity of research findings and lead to new insights and discoveries that may not be possible with other research methods.

• Disadvantages of field research

While field research has several advantages, there are also some disadvantages that researchers need to consider, including:

Time-consuming : Researchers need to spend time in the field, possibly weeks or months, which can be challenging, especially if the research site is remote or requires travel.

Cost : Conducting field research can be costly, especially if the research site is remote or requires specialized equipment or materials.

Reliance on participants : It may be challenging to recruit participants, and various factors, such as personal circumstances, attitudes, and beliefs, may influence their participation.

Ethical considerations : Field research may raise ethical concerns, mainly if the research involves vulnerable populations or sensitive topics. 

Causality: Researchers may have little control over the environmental or contextual variables they are studying. This can make it difficult to establish causality and then generalize their results with previous research. 

Researchers must carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of field research and select the most appropriate research method based on their research question, participants, and context.

What is another name for field study?

Field study is also known as field research or fieldwork. These terms are often used interchangeably and refer to research methods that involve observing and collecting data in natural settings.

What is the difference between a field study and a case study?

Why is field study important.

Field study is critical because it allows researchers to study real-world phenomena in natural settings. This study can also lead to novel insights that may not be possible with other research methods.

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What is Field Research? Definition, Types, Methods, Examples

Appinio Research · 05.04.2024 · 30min read

Have you ever wondered how researchers gather data about real-life situations, behaviors, and interactions? Field research holds the answer. Field research is like stepping into the world around us to study things as they naturally happen. It's about going beyond the confines of a lab or a controlled environment to observe, interact with, and collect data from people, communities, or natural settings. Whether it's understanding how people make decisions, studying the behavior of animals in their habitats, or exploring cultural practices in different societies, field research offers a window into the complexities of our world. It's a hands-on approach that allows you to immerse yourself in the context you're studying, gaining firsthand insights and uncovering patterns that might not be apparent in artificial settings. From interviewing participants to conducting observations and surveys, field researchers employ a variety of techniques to capture the richness and diversity of human experiences and natural phenomena. In this guide, we'll explore the ins and outs of field research, from its importance and applications to practical tips for planning, conducting, and analyzing field studies.

What is Field Research?

Field research is a qualitative data collection method that involves studying phenomena in their natural settings. Unlike laboratory experiments or simulations, field research takes place in real-world environments, allowing you to observe, interact with, and gather data from participants or phenomena as they naturally occur. This approach enables researchers to gain firsthand insights into complex social, behavioral, or environmental dynamics, providing rich and contextually embedded data for analysis and interpretation.

Importance of Field Research

Field research plays a crucial role in various disciplines and industries, serving as a cornerstone for generating new knowledge, understanding real-world phenomena, and informing decision-making and practice.

Here is why field research is important:

• Contextual Understanding:  Field research allows researchers to study phenomena in their natural contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and environmental factors that shape behavior, attitudes, and experiences. By immersing themselves in the field, you can capture the intricacies and complexities of real-life situations that may not be apparent in controlled laboratory settings.
• Insights into Human Behavior:  Field research provides valuable insights into human behavior, interactions, and relationships in diverse contexts. By observing and interacting with participants in their natural environments, researchers can uncover patterns, motivations, and social dynamics that influence individual and group behaviors. This understanding is essential for addressing societal challenges, designing interventions, and improving policy and practice.
• Generating Grounded Theory:  Field research often serves as the foundation for grounded theory development, where theoretical frameworks and hypotheses emerge from empirical observations and data analysis. By systematically collecting and analyzing data from the field, you can generate new theories, concepts, or models that are grounded in real-world phenomena and have practical relevance and applicability.
• Validating and Supplementing Existing Knowledge:  Field research provides an opportunity to validate or supplement existing knowledge derived from laboratory studies, surveys, or secondary data sources. By corroborating findings across different methods and contexts, you can enhance the credibility and robustness of their conclusions and contribute to the accumulation of knowledge in their respective fields.
• Informing Policy and Practice:  Field research findings have direct implications for policy development, program planning, and practice in various sectors such as healthcare, education, social services, and environmental management . By generating evidence-based insights and recommendations, field research can inform decision-making processes, guide resource allocation, and improve the effectiveness and relevance of interventions and policies.

Field research offers a unique opportunity to explore, understand, and address real-world phenomena in their natural contexts. By embracing the complexities and nuances of the field, researchers can generate valuable insights, advance theoretical understanding, and make meaningful contributions to scholarship, practice, and society at large.

How to Prepare for Field Research?

Laying the groundwork for your research journey is crucial before diving into the field. This involves a series of preparatory steps aimed at ensuring clarity, focus, and feasibility in your approach.

1. Define Research Objectives

Your research objectives serve as the guiding light throughout your field research endeavor. They delineate the purpose of your study and provide a clear direction for your investigative efforts. When defining your objectives, consider the overarching goals you aim to achieve and the specific outcomes you hope to attain through your research. Whether it's understanding a particular phenomenon, exploring a societal issue, or testing a theoretical proposition, articulate your objectives with precision and clarity.

2. Choose a Research Topic

Selecting the right research topic is paramount to the success of your field research project. Your topic should be aligned with your interests, expertise, and the broader context of your field of study. Consider the relevance, novelty, and significance of potential topics, and choose one that resonates with your intellectual curiosity and research goals. Additionally, ensure that your chosen topic is feasible within the constraints of time, resources, and access to data or participants.

3. Develop Research Questions

Research questions serve as the compass that guides your inquiry and shapes the trajectory of your research journey. These questions should be framed in a way that allows for systematic investigation and exploration of the phenomenon under study. When developing your research questions, strive for clarity, specificity, and relevance to your chosen topic. Consider the scope of inquiry, the level of detail required, and the potential implications of your questions for theory, practice, or policy.

4. Formulate Hypotheses

Hypotheses provide a framework for hypothesis-driven research, allowing you to make predictions about the relationships or patterns you expect to observe in your data. If your research is hypothesis-driven, formulate clear and testable hypotheses that articulate the expected outcomes or associations based on existing theory or empirical evidence. Ensure your hypotheses are falsifiable, meaning they can be rigorously tested and potentially disproven through empirical investigation.

5. Review Existing Literature

Before venturing into the field, take the time to immerse yourself in the existing literature relevant to your research topic. A comprehensive literature review not only provides valuable insights into the current state of knowledge but also helps you identify gaps, contradictions, or areas needing further exploration. Synthesize and critically evaluate the findings, theories, and methodologies presented in the literature, and use this knowledge to inform your own research design , questions, and hypotheses.

6. Secure Necessary Permissions and Resources

Obtaining the requisite permissions and resources is essential for the smooth execution of your field research project. Depending on the nature of your study, you may need to seek ethical approval from institutional review boards or obtain permits for conducting research in specific locations or with certain populations.

Additionally, ensure you have access to the necessary resources, such as funding, equipment, transportation, and logistical support, to carry out your research effectively. Be proactive in addressing potential challenges or barriers that may arise during the planning phase, and seek guidance or assistance as needed to navigate the regulatory and logistical requirements of your research endeavor.

How to Plan Field Research?

As you transition from the preparatory phase to the implementation stage, meticulous planning becomes essential to ensure the success and efficiency of your field research endeavors. Let's delve into the key components of planning field research, from selecting appropriate methodologies to anticipating and mitigating potential challenges.

1. Select Suitable Research Methods

Choosing the proper research methods is pivotal to the success of your field research project. Your research objectives, questions, and the nature of the phenomenon under investigation should guide the selection process. Consider the strengths and limitations of various research methodologies, such as qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches, and choose the one that best aligns with your research goals. Factors to consider include:

• The level of depth and detail required.
• The type of data you aim to collect.
• The accessibility of research participants or sites.

Be prepared to adapt and refine your chosen methods as you gain insights and experience in the field.

2. Design Research Instruments

Once you've identified your research methods, the next step is to design the instruments or tools you'll use to collect data. Whether it's interview guides, survey questionnaires , observation protocols, or experimental materials , your research instruments should be meticulously crafted to elicit relevant and reliable information from your participants.

Pay attention to the clarity, comprehensiveness, and validity of your instruments, ensuring that they align with your research objectives and are appropriate for your target population or context. Pilot testing your instruments with a small sample of participants can help identify and address any ambiguities or issues before full-scale implementation.

3. Determine Sampling Techniques

Sampling is a critical aspect of field research, influencing the representativeness and generalizability of your findings. There are various sampling techniques available, each suited to different research designs and objectives. Consider factors such as the size and diversity of your target population, the accessibility of potential participants, and the level of precision required for your study.

Standard sampling techniques include probability sampling methods like simple random sampling, stratified sampling , or cluster sampling , as well as non-probability sampling methods like convenience sampling, purposive sampling, or snowball sampling. Choose the sampling technique that best balances practical considerations with the need for valid and reliable data.

4. Create a Research Schedule

Developing a well-structured research schedule is essential for keeping your field research project on track and ensuring you meet your deadlines and milestones. Start by breaking down your research activities into manageable tasks and allocating timeframes for each stage of the process, from pre-fieldwork preparation to data analysis and reporting.

• Be realistic in your estimations and build in buffer time for unexpected delays or challenges that may arise during fieldwork.
• Consider factors such as seasonal variations, logistical constraints, and the availability of participants when scheduling your research activities.
• Regularly review and update your schedule as needed to accommodate changes or revisions to your plans.

5. Identify Potential Challenges and Mitigation Strategies

Field research is inherently unpredictable, and you're likely to encounter various challenges and obstacles along the way. Anticipating these challenges proactively and developing mitigation strategies can help minimize their impact on your research outcomes. Common challenges in field research include logistical issues, recruitment difficulties, ethical dilemmas, and interpersonal conflicts.

Take the time to identify potential risks and vulnerabilities inherent in your research design and context, and develop contingency plans or alternative courses of action to address them. Collaborate with peers, mentors, or experienced researchers to brainstorm solutions and draw on their insights and expertise. By being prepared and adaptable, you can navigate the complexities of field research with confidence and resilience.

How to Conduct Field Research?

Now that you've laid the groundwork and meticulously planned your field research project, it's time to roll up your sleeves and immerse yourself in the field.

Data Collection Techniques

Data collection is the heart of field research, enabling you to gather firsthand insights and observations from the field. You can employ several techniques to collect data, depending on your research objectives, context, and the nature of your study.

• Observational Methods:  Direct observation involves systematically observing and documenting behaviors, interactions, or phenomena in natural settings without interfering or influencing the subjects. This method is particularly useful for studying social interactions, environmental dynamics, or animal behavior.
• Interviewing:   Interviews allow researchers to engage in structured, semi-structured, or unstructured conversations with participants to gather in-depth insights, perspectives, or experiences related to the research topic. Depending on logistical constraints and participant preferences, interviews can be conducted face-to-face, over the phone, or via digital platforms.
• Surveys and Questionnaires :  Surveys involve administering standardized questionnaires or surveys to a sample of respondents to collect quantitative data on their attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, or demographics. Surveys can be distributed in person, via mail, email, or online platforms, depending on the target population and accessibility.
• Focus Groups :  Focus groups bring together a small group of participants to engage in facilitated discussions or brainstorming sessions around specific topics or issues. This method allows you to explore group dynamics, consensus, or dissent among participants and generate rich qualitative data through interaction and dialogue.

Choose the data collection techniques that best align with your research objectives, methodology, and participants' preferences. Be mindful of ethical considerations, informed consent procedures, and the need to maintain confidentiality and privacy during data collection.

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Fieldwork Logistics

Effective management of fieldwork logistics is essential for the smooth execution of your research project and the well-being of both researchers and participants. This entails careful planning, coordination, and organization of various logistical aspects, including participant recruitment, site selection, equipment management, and safety protocols.

• Recruiting Participants:  Identify and recruit eligible participants using appropriate sampling techniques and recruitment strategies. Clearly communicate the purpose and expectations of the study, obtain informed consent, and address any concerns or questions raised by participants.
• Establishing Field Sites:  Select and secure suitable field sites or locations where data collection will take place. Consider factors such as accessibility, safety, privacy, and the relevance of the site to your research objectives. Obtain any necessary permits or permissions required for conducting research in specific locations.
• Managing Equipment and Supplies:  Ensure that you have all the necessary equipment, materials, and resources required for data collection, recording, and storage. This may include audio or video recording devices, notebooks, pens, measuring instruments, or digital devices for data entry.
• Ensuring Research Ethics and Safety:  Adhere to ethical principles and guidelines governing research with human subjects, animals, or sensitive environments. Prioritize participant welfare and safety by implementing appropriate risk management measures, emergency procedures, and protocols for handling sensitive or confidential information.

Regularly assess and reassess the logistical needs and challenges encountered during fieldwork, and be prepared to adapt and improvise as needed to overcome obstacles and ensure the successful completion of your research objectives.

Data Recording and Management

Accurate and systematic data recording is crucial for maintaining the integrity and reliability of your research findings. Establish clear protocols and procedures for recording, organizing, and managing your data throughout the fieldwork process.

• Data Recording:  Document observations, interviews, survey responses, or other forms of data systematically and consistently. Use standardized formats, codes, or identifiers to ensure uniformity and ease of analysis. Consider using digital tools or software for data collection and recording to streamline the process and minimize errors.
• Data Storage and Backup:  Store your data securely and responsibly to prevent loss, theft, or unauthorized access. Back up your data regularly using reliable storage devices or cloud-based platforms to safeguard against data loss or corruption. Implement encryption, password protection, or other security measures to protect sensitive or confidential information.
• Data Validation and Quality Control:  Conduct periodic checks and validations to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and validity of your data. Double-check entries, reconcile discrepancies, and address any outliers or inconsistencies identified during the data collection process. Maintain detailed documentation of any revisions or corrections made to the dataset.

By implementing robust data recording and management practices, you can enhance the reliability, transparency, and reproducibility of your research outcomes and facilitate the analysis and interpretation of your findings.

Field Research Examples

Field research plays a pivotal role in helping businesses understand their customers, market dynamics, and competitive landscape. Here are some examples of how field research can be applied in real-world scenarios.

Customer Observation and Ethnography

Imagine a retail company seeking to improve its store layout and enhance customers' shopping experience. By conducting field research through customer observation and ethnographic studies , researchers can immerse themselves in the retail environment, observing how customers navigate the store, interact with products , and make purchasing decisions.

Through careful observation and note-taking, you can uncover valuable insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and pain points, informing strategic decisions around product placement, signage, and store design.

In-Depth Interviews and Focus Groups

A tech startup developing a new mobile app wants to gather feedback from potential users to refine its features and user interface. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted in the field, researchers can engage directly with target users, exploring their needs, preferences , and usage patterns.

Asking probing questions and facilitating group discussions can elicit rich qualitative insights into user experiences, pain points, and desired functionalities. This firsthand feedback can guide the iterative development process, ensuring that the app meets the needs and expectations of its intended audience.

Market Research and Competitive Analysis

A multinational corporation launching a new product in a foreign market conducts field research to assess market demand and understand local competitors. Researchers may conduct surveys, interviews, and market observations to gather data on consumer preferences, buying behavior, and competitor offerings.

By analyzing this data, the company can identify market opportunities, refine its marketing strategy, and tailor its product offerings to meet the specific needs and preferences of the target market . Field research also provides valuable insights into competitive positioning, allowing the company to differentiate itself and capitalize on its unique strengths.

User Testing and Usability Studies

A software development company wants to ensure that its website is user-friendly and intuitive for visitors. Through field research methods such as user testing and usability studies , researchers can observe real users interacting with the website in a naturalistic setting.

By monitoring users' actions, navigation patterns, and feedback, you can identify usability issues, areas of confusion, and opportunities for improvement. This iterative process of testing and refinement helps optimize the website's design and functionality, ultimately enhancing the user experience and driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Employee Feedback and Organizational Culture

A large corporation embarks on a field research initiative to better understand employee satisfaction, engagement, and organizational culture. Through surveys, focus groups, and participatory observation, researchers gather feedback from employees across different departments and hierarchical levels.

By exploring topics such as work-life balance, communication channels, and leadership effectiveness, you can identify areas of strength and areas for improvement within the organization. This insights-driven approach enables the company to implement targeted interventions, policies, and initiatives to foster a positive and inclusive work environment, ultimately enhancing employee morale, productivity, and retention.

In each of these examples, field research serves as a valuable tool for generating actionable insights, informing strategic decision-making, and driving business success. By embracing a hands-on, experiential approach to research, businesses can gain a competitive edge in today's dynamic and rapidly evolving marketplace.

How to Analyze Field Research Data?

Once you've collected data in the field, the next critical step is to analyze it to derive meaningful insights and draw conclusions.

1. Clean and Organize Data

Before delving into the analysis, it's essential to clean and organize your data to ensure its quality and integrity. Data cleaning involves identifying and rectifying errors, inconsistencies, or missing values in your dataset. Data cleaning tasks include:

• Removing Outliers:  Identify and remove any extreme or erroneous data points that may skew your analysis or distort your findings.
• Handling Missing Data:  Address missing values by imputing them using appropriate techniques such as mean imputation, regression imputation, or multiple imputation.
• Standardizing Variables:  Ensure consistency in measurement units, scales, or formats across variables to facilitate comparison and analysis.
• Checking for Data Entry Errors:  Review data entries for typos, duplicates, or other inaccuracies that may arise during data collection or recording.

Once the data cleaning process is complete, organize your dataset in a structured and systematic manner to facilitate analysis. Create variables, labels, or categories as needed, and document any transformations or manipulations applied to the data for transparency and reproducibility.

2. Apply Analytical Techniques

With a clean and organized dataset in hand, you can now apply analytical techniques to uncover patterns, relationships, or trends within the data. The choice of analytical techniques will depend on your research questions, objectives, and the nature of your data.

Analytical methods used in field research include:

• Descriptive Statistics :  Calculate measures of central tendency, variability, and distribution to summarize and describe your data.
• Inferential Statistics :  Use statistical tests such as t-tests , chi-square tests , regression analysis , or analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test hypotheses, compare groups, or examine relationships between variables.
• Qualitative Analysis:  Employ qualitative data analysis techniques such as thematic analysis , content analysis, or grounded theory to explore themes, patterns, or meanings embedded within textual or narrative data.
• Mixed Methods Analysis:  Integrate quantitative and qualitative data to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the research phenomenon through triangulation or data transformation techniques.

Chi-Square Calculator :

t-Test Calculator :

One-way ANOVA Calculator :

Select analytical techniques appropriate for your research design, data type, and research questions. Ensure your analyses are conducted rigorously and transparently, adhering to established standards and guidelines in your field.

3. Interpret Findings

Once the analysis is complete, it's time to interpret the findings and draw meaningful conclusions from your data. Interpretation involves making sense of the results in the context of your research objectives, theoretical framework, and empirical evidence.

• Contextualizing Results:  Situate your findings within the broader context of existing literature, theoretical perspectives, or real-world phenomena to provide meaningful insights and interpretations.
• Identifying Patterns and Trends:  Highlight recurring patterns, trends, or relationships observed in the data and discuss their implications for theory, practice, or policy.
• Exploring Alternative Explanations:  Consider alternative explanations or interpretations of the findings and discuss their potential implications for the validity and reliability of your conclusions.
• Addressing Unexpected Findings:  Acknowledge and address any unexpected or counterintuitive findings that may challenge existing assumptions or theories and offer plausible explanations or avenues for further exploration.

Communicate your interpretations clearly and concisely, using evidence from your data to support your claims and conclusions. Be transparent about the limitations and uncertainties inherent in your findings, and discuss their implications for future research or practice.

4. Address Limitations and Bias

No research study is without limitations or biases, and it's essential to acknowledge and address these shortcomings transparently. To address limitations and bias in your field research:

• Methodological Limitations:  Discuss any limitations or constraints inherent in your research design, sampling methods, or data collection techniques that may have influenced the validity or generalizability of your findings.
• Selection Bias :  Be mindful of selection bias, where certain groups or individuals are overrepresented or underrepresented in your sample, and consider its potential impact on the reliability and validity of your results.
• Social Desirability Bias:  Recognize the influence of social desirability bias, where participants may provide responses that are perceived as socially acceptable rather than truthful, and consider strategies to mitigate its effects.
• Researcher Bias:  Reflect on your own biases, assumptions, or preconceptions that may have influenced the research process or interpretation of findings, and strive for objectivity and reflexivity in your analysis and reporting.

By acknowledging and addressing limitations and biases transparently, you demonstrate intellectual honesty and integrity, and contribute to the credibility and robustness of your research outcomes.

How to Report Field Research Results?

Communicating your research findings effectively is essential for sharing your insights with the academic community, policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. Here are some strategies for reporting and presenting your results:

• Structuring the Research Report:  Organize your research report in a clear and logical manner, following the conventions of academic writing. Include sections such as introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions. Each section should flow cohesively, guiding the reader through the research process from inception to conclusion.
• Writing Techniques and Guidelines:  Use clear, concise, and jargon-free language to convey your findings to a diverse audience. Structure your sentences and paragraphs logically, and use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to enhance readability. Pay attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and adhere to the formatting style prescribed by your discipline or publication venue.
• Creating Visual Representations: Enhance your research report or presentation with visual representations such as tables, charts, graphs, heatmaps , or diagrams. Choose visual formats that effectively illustrate key findings or trends in your data. Ensure that your visuals are clear, accurate, and appropriately labeled, and provide a brief caption or explanation to contextualize the information presented.
• Preparing Presentations:  Design engaging and informative presentations highlighting your research's main findings and implications. Use slides, visuals, and storytelling techniques to capture your audience's attention and convey your message effectively. Structure your presentation logically, with a clear introduction, main body, and conclusion, and allow time for questions and discussion.
• Sharing Findings with Stakeholders:  Share your research findings with relevant stakeholders, including academic peers, policymakers, practitioners, or community members. Tailor your communication approach to the needs and preferences of your audience, and choose appropriate dissemination channels such as conferences, seminars, publications, or social media platforms. Invite feedback or collaboration whenever possible, and be open to engaging in dialogue and knowledge exchange with your audience.

Effective reporting and presentation of research results not only showcase the significance and impact of your work but also contribute to knowledge dissemination, collaboration, and informed decision-making in your field. Strive for clarity, coherence, and engagement in your communication efforts, and consider your audience's diverse needs and interests when crafting your messages.

Conclusion for Field Research

Field research is a powerful tool for gaining a deeper understanding of the world around us. By venturing into real-life settings, you can uncover valuable insights into human behavior, societal dynamics, and natural phenomena. Whether studying the behavior of animals in their natural habitats or exploring the intricacies of human interactions, field research offers a unique perspective that complements other research methods. By embracing the complexities and nuances of the field, researchers can generate knowledge that is grounded in real-world experiences and has practical implications for addressing pressing societal challenges. Furthermore, field research isn't just about collecting data—it's about making a difference. The i nsights gained from field studies can inform policy decisions, shape interventions, and drive positive change in communities and organizations . By sharing their findings with stakeholders, you can contribute to evidence-based decision-making and foster collaboration between academia, government, and civil society.

How to Conduct Research in Minutes?

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Field Research explained

Field research: this article explains the concept of field research in a practical way. The article starts with the definition of this term, followed by a general explanation and some practical examples of field research. You will also find an explanation of the various methods and a step-by-step plan for conducting field research. Enjoy reading!

What is field research?

Field research, also known as fieldwork, is a method of collecting raw data outside of the lab, library, or usual workplace.

It involves observing and interacting with people, animals or phenomena in their natural environment to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior, social interactions and the dynamics of their environment. Read more about experimental research .

Field research methods vary by field. For example, biologists observe animals in their natural habitats, and social scientists conduct interviews and observations to study human societies.

The definition of Field research

Field research is a qualitative research method that focuses on observing and understanding individuals, groups, communities or society as a whole.

It aims to capture authentic and contextual data by immersing researchers in the environments they study.

Through direct observation and interaction with subjects, field researchers gain firsthand insight into their behaviour, beliefs, cultural practices and social structures.

It encompasses a wide variety of well-defined methods, including:

• Formal interviews
• Informal interviews

Direct observation

Participating observation.

• Collective discussions
• Analysis of personal documents
• Self-analysis
• Offline and online activities

Although this type of research is mainly qualitative, it can also contain quantitative aspects, depending on the research goals and methodologies applied.

History and the origin of Field research

Field research has a long history, especially within cultural anthropology . Anthropologists have made extensive use of field research to study different cultures, often focusing on so-called primitive cultures or cultural differences based on factors such as class.

The term “field” refers to defined areas of research, such as education, industrial environments or Amazon rainforests, where social research is conducted.

Influential figures in the early development of this type of research include Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and Bronisław Malinowski, who laid the foundations for future work in anthropology.

Field research versus laboratory research

Field research and laboratory research differ in their approach to data collection.

Field research takes place in natural environments, where researchers make direct observations and interact. It provides contextual data and insight into complex processes, but may be limited in establishing causal relationships.

On the other hand, laboratory research takes place in controlled environments, where variables are manipulated and repeatability is ensured.

It is well suited for testing hypotheses and obtaining accurate measurements, but may lack the complexity of natural environments.

Both approaches complement each other and the choice depends on the research questions and available resources .

Research Methods For Business Students Course A-Z guide to writing a rockstar Research Paper with a bulletproof Research Methodology!   More information

Methods for field research

Field research involves the use of various methods to collect valuable data and gain insight into the phenomena under investigation.

Here are some common methods applied in field research:

This method involves carefully observing people, animals, or events in their natural environment. By watching closely, researchers can study behaviors, interactions, and responses to specific situations without actively participating.

In this method, the researcher actively participates in the group, community, or environment under study. By participating in activities, having conversations and being involved in daily routines, researchers can develop a deep understanding of the social structures, norms and values, and the meaning attached to certain actions.

Qualitative interviews

This includes conducting interviews with individuals or groups to find out their perspectives, experiences and opinions. By asking open-ended questions and delving deeper into topics, researchers can gain insight into participants’ thoughts and feelings.

Data analysis of documents

In this method, documents, such as letters, diaries, reports, or other written materials, are analyzed to obtain information and insights. These documents can provide valuable context and provide a historical perspective on the issues examined.

Informal conversations

Sometimes having informal conversations with people in the research environment can yield useful information. These can be casual chats during breaks or informal gatherings where people talk freely about their experiences and perspectives.

The use of these different methods allows researchers to collect a wide range of data and develop an in-depth understanding of the social, cultural and behavioral aspects of the phenomena under study.

Case studies

Case studies are a useful approach in field research to gain in-depth insights into specific situations, groups or phenomena.

Step-by-step plan for conducting field research

Follow the steps below to get started conducting field research yourself.

Step 1: define your research goal

Determine the specific goal of your research. What do you want to discover, understand or observe? Clearly formulate your research question(s) and objective(s).

Step 2: design your research plan

Consider which methods and approaches are best suited to your research question. Consider the location, participants/population, data collection methods and time frame.

Step 3: Get permission

If necessary, obtain permission from relevant agencies, organizations or individuals to access the study site and collect data. Make sure you follow ethical guidelines and procedures.

Step 4: collect data

Go to the research site and start collecting data according to your research plan. This may include direct observation, interviews, surveys, participant observation or collection of documentation.

Step 5: Analyze and interpret your data

Evaluate and analyze the collected data . Identify patterns, themes or trends relevant to your research question. Interpretation of the data should be based on accurate and systematic analysis.

Step 6: draw conclusions and formulate results

Based on your analysis and interpretation, you come to conclusions that answer your research question . Formulate clear results and present them in a structured way .

Step 7: Report and share your findings

Write a research report describing the methodology, findings and conclusions. Share your results with the scientific community, stakeholders or the wider public through publications, presentations or other appropriate channels.

Step 8: Reflect and Evaluate your field research

Take the time to evaluate your research experience . What were the strengths and challenges of your research? What would you do differently in the future? Reflect on possible improvements and learning points for subsequent studies.

Examples of known field studies

Numerous interesting discoveries have been made while conducting research. Here are three examples of discoveries made while conducting this type of research:

New animal species

Field research has led to the discovery of several new animal species. For example, in 2018, during a field research expedition in the rainforests of Ecuador, researchers discovered a new species of tree frog.

This discovery highlighted the importance of field research in identifying biodiversity and understanding the ecological systems in which these species live.

Ecological changes

Field research has also helped identify ecological changes and understand their causes.

For example, by studying coral reefs in different parts of the world, scientists have found that coral bleaching, a consequence of climate change, is having a devastating effect on coral reef health.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Do you recognize the explanation about field research? Have you ever heard of this type of research before? Have you ever conducted this yourself? What do you think are the advantages compared to, for example, research in a laboratory? Do you have tips or other comments?

Share your experience and knowledge in the comments box below.

More information

• Barick, R. (2021). Research Methods For Business Students . Retrieved 02/16/2024 from Udemy.
• Burgess, R. G. (Ed.). (2003). Field Research: A sourcebook and field manual (Vol. 4) . Routledge.
• Burgess, R. G. (2002). In the field: An introduction to Field Research (Vol. 8) . Routledge.
• Edmondson, A. C., & McManus, S. E. (2007). Methodological fit in management Field Research . Academy of management review, 32(4), 1246-1264.
• McKinnon, J. (1988). Reliability and validity in Field Research: some strategies and tactics . Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 1(1), 34-54

How to cite this article: Janse, B. (2023). Field Research . Retrieved [insert date] from Toolshero: https://www.toolshero.com/research/field-research/

Original publication date: 08/21/2023 | Last update: 01/02/2024

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Ben Janse is a young professional working at ToolsHero as Content Manager. He is also an International Business student at Rotterdam Business School where he focusses on analyzing and developing management models. Thanks to his theoretical and practical knowledge, he knows how to distinguish main- and side issues and to make the essence of each article clearly visible.

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• What is Field Research: Meaning, Examples, Pros & Cons

Introduction

Field research is a method of research that deals with understanding and interpreting the social interactions of groups of people and communities by observing and dealing with people in their natural settings. 

The field research methods involve direct observation, participant observation, and qualitative interviews.

Let’s take a deeper look at field research, what it entails, some examples as well as the pros and cons of field research.

What is Field Research

Field research can be defined as a qualitative method of data collection focused on observing, relating, and understanding people while they are in their natural environment. It is somewhat similar to documentaries on Nat Geo wild where the animals are observed in their natural habitat. 

Similarly, social scientists, who are sometimes called men watchers carry out interviews and observe people from a distance to see how they act in a social environment and react to situations around them.

Field research usually begins in a specific setting and the end game is to study, observe and analyze the subject within that setting. It looks at the cause and effect as well as the correlation between the participants and their natural setting. Due to the presence of multiple variables, it is sometimes difficult to properly analyze the results of field research. 

Field research adopts a wide range of social research methods, such as limited participation, direct observation, document analysis, surveys, and informal interviews. Although field research is generally considered qualitative research , it often involves multiple elements of quantitative research.

Methods of Field Research

There are 5 different methods of conducting Field Research and they are as follows;

1. Direct Observation

In this method of research, the researcher watches and records the activities of groups of people or individuals as they go about their daily activities. Direct observation can be structured or unstructured.

 Structured here means that the observation takes place using a guide or process developed before that time. 

Unstructured, on the other hand, means that the researcher conducted the observation, watching people and events, and taking notes as events progressed, without the aid of any predetermined technique.

Some other features of direct observation include the following;

• The observer does not attempt to actively engage the people being observed in conversations or interviews, rather he or she blends into the crowd and carries out their observation.
• Data collected include field notes, videos, photographs, rating scales, etc.
• Direct observation most times occurs in the open, usually public settings, that requires no permission to gain entry. Conducting direct observation in a private setting would raise ethical concerns.
• The outcome of direct observation is not in any way influenced by the researcher.

2. Participant Observation

This research method has an understanding with a group of individuals, to take part in their daily routines and their scheduled events. In this case, the researcher dwells among the group or community being observed for as long as is necessary to build trust and evoke acceptance.

Data from the participant’s observation take the following varying forms;

• Field notes are the primary source of data. These notes are taken during the researcher’s observations and from the events they experienced and later developed the notes into formal field notes.
• A diary is used to record special intimate events that occur within the setting.
• The process of participant observation is intent on developing relationships with the members which breed conversations that are sometimes formal or informal. Formal here refers to deliberate depth interviews, while informal could stem from everyday conversations that give insight into the study. 

Data from these events can be part of the field notes or separate interview transcripts.

The method of participant observation aims to make the people involved comfortable enough to share what they know freely without any inhibition.

3. Ethnography

Ethnography is a form of field research that carries out observation through social research, social perspective, and the cultural values of a social setting. In this scenario, the observation is carried out objectively, hence the researcher may choose to live within a social environment of a cultural group and silently observe and record their daily routines and behavior.

4. Qualitative Interviews

Qualitative interviews are a type of field research method that gets information by asking direct questions from individuals to gather data on a particular subject. Qualitative interviews are usually conducted via 3 methods namely;

• Informal Interviews
• Semi Structured Interviews
• Standardized Open ended Interviews

Let’s take a look at each of them briefly along with their advantages and disadvantages.

This kind of interview is often conversational and occurs during participant and direct observations.

The interview is triggered, most times spontaneously by conversing with a member of the group on the areas of interest and as the conversation progresses, the researcher fluidly introduces the specific question.

• Semi-Structured Interviews

In this scenario, the researcher already has a list of prepared questions, that are open-ended and can evoke as much information as possible. The researcher can venture into other topics as the interview progresses, using a call-and-response style.

This method of field research can adopt a mix of one-on-one interviews or focus groups.

• Standardized, Open-Ended Interviews

These are scripted interviews with the questions prepped and written before the interview following a predetermined order. It is similar to a survey and the questions are open-ended to gather detailed information from the respondents and sometimes it involves multiple interviewers.

5. Case Study

A case study research is a detailed analysis of a person, situation, or event. This method may seem a bit complex, however, it is one of the easiest ways of conducting research. difficult to operate, however, it is one of the simplest ways of researching as it involves only a detailed study of an individual or a group of people or events. Every aspect of the subject life and history is analyzed to identify patterns and causes of behavior.

Steps to Conduct Field Research

Due to the nature of field research, the tight timelines, and the associated costs involved, planning and implementing can be a bit overwhelming. We have put together steps to adopt that would make the whole process hitch free for you.

Set Up The Right Team : To begin your field research, the first step is to have the right team. The role of the researcher and the team members has to be well defined from the start, with the relevant milestones agreed upon to measure progress.

Recruiting People for the Study : The success of field research largely depends on the people being studied. Evaluate the individuals selected for the research to be sure that they tick all the boxes required for successful research in the area of study that is being researched.

Data Collection Methodology : The methodology of data collection adopted must be suited to the area or kind of research being conducted. It could be one of the methods or a combination of two or more methods.

Visit The Site: A prior visit to the site is essential to the success of the field research. This should be done to also help determine the best methodology that would be suitable for the location. 

Data Analysis: Analyzing the data gathered is important to validate the hypothesis of the field research. 

Communicating Results : Once the data is analyzed, communicate the results to the stakeholders involved in the research so that the relevant action required based on the results can be decided and carried out promptly. 

Reasons to Conduct Field Research

Field research has been widely used in the 20th century in the social sciences. However, it can be time-consuming and costly to implement. Despite this fact, there exist a lot of reasons to conduct field research.

Here are 4 major reasons to conduct field research:

Solves the problem of lack of data : Field research fixes the issue of gaps in data, especially in cases where there is very little or no data about a topic. In cases like this, the only way to validate any hypothesis is through primary research and data. Conducting field research solves the problem of data lapses and provides material evidence to support any findings.

Understanding the context of the study : In many cases, the data collected is appropriate, however for a deep understanding of the data gathered there is a need for field research to help understand other factors in the study. For instance, if data show that students from rich homes generally do well academically. 

Conducting field research can bring to the fore other factors like, discipline, well-equipped teachers, motivation from their forebears to excel in whatever they do, etc. but field research is still conducted. 

Increasing data quality: Since this research, method employs the use of multiple tools to collect data and varying methodologies, the quality of data is higher.

Collecting ancillary data : Field research puts the researchers in a position of being at the center of the data collection process, in terms of location, one on one relationship with the participants, etc. This exposes them to new lines of thought that would have hitherto been overlooked and they can now collect data, that was not planned for at the beginning of the study.

Examples of Field Research

1. Interprete social metrics in a slum By employing the use of observation methods and formal interviews, researchers can now understand the social indicators and social hierarchy that exist in a slum.

Financial independence and the way the slum is run daily are part of the study and data collected from these areas can give insight into the way a slum operates differently from structured societies.

2. Understand the impact of sports on a child’s development This method of field research takes years to conduct and the sample size can be quite huge. Data collected and analyzed from this study provides insight into how children from different physical locations and backgrounds are influenced by sports and the impact of sporting activities on a child’s development. 

3. The study of animal migration patterns Field research is used immensely to study flora and fauna. A major use case is scientists observing and studying animal migration patterns alongside the change of seasons and its influence on animal migration patterns.

Field research takes time and uses months and sometimes years to help gather data that show how to safely expedite the passage of animals.

Advantages of Field Research

Field research and the various methodology employed have their pros and cons.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

• Provide context to the data being analyzed in terms of settings, interactions, or individuals.
• The source of data does not require or involve verbal interactions, and there is no intrusion of anyone’s personal, space because everything is done quietly, from a distance.
• The researcher develops a  deep and detailed understanding of a setting and the members within the setting.
• It is carried out in a real-world and natural environment which eliminates tampering with variables.
• The study is conducted in a comfortable environment, hence data can be gathered even about an ancillary topic, that would have been undiscovered in other circumstances.
• The researcher’s deep understanding of the research subjects due to their proximity to them makes the research thorough and precise. 
• It helps the researcher to be flexible and respond to individual differences while capturing emerging information. Allows the researcher to be responsive to individual differences and to capture emerging information.

Disadvantages of Field Research

• The researcher might not be able to capture all that is being said and there is the risk of losing information.
• The quality of the information derived is dependent, on the researcher’s skills.
• Significant interactions and events may occur when an observer is not present.
• Some topics cannot easily be interpreted by mere observation.g., attitudes, emotions, affection).
• The reliability of observations can be complex due to the presence of multiple observers with different interpretations.
• It requires a lot of time (and resources)and can take years to complete.
• The researcher may lose objectivity as they spend more time among the members of the group.
• It is a subjective and interpretive method that is solely dependent on the researcher’s ability.

Field research helps researchers to gain firsthand experience and knowledge about the events, processes, and people, being studied. No other method provides this kind of close-up view of the everyday life of people and events. It is a very detailed method of research and is excellent for understanding the role of social context in shaping the lives, perspectives, and experiences of people. Alongside this, it may uncover aspects of a person that might never have been discovered.

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What is field research? Meaning, methods, and examples

Insights • Aakash Jethwani • 11 Mins reading time

In the realm of research methodologies, field study, often called field research, stands out as a pivotal approach to understanding real-world phenomena through direct observation and interaction within natural settings. 

Unlike controlled experiments, it captures genuine behaviors and social interactions, providing rich and detailed insights. Field research offers a firsthand look at reality, whether you’re exploring cultural traditions, studying social issues, or understanding consumer habits. 

For businesses, this method is invaluable for improving product design, enhancing usability, and making informed decisions based on real-life data. 

Let’s start with this blog to explore field research meaning and significance and provide field research examples to illustrate its diverse applications.

Field research meaning

Field research encompasses the systematic study conducted outside controlled environments, where researchers directly engage with subjects in their natural contexts. It involves observation, interaction, and data collection in real-world settings, aiming to capture user behaviors, interactions, and phenomena as they naturally occur. 

Unlike experiments conducted in artificial setups, field study enables researchers to explore and understand the complexities of human societies, wildlife habitats, consumer behaviors, and cultural practices within their natural environments. 

This methodological approach provides rich, contextual insights that contribute to a deeper understanding of various disciplines and phenomena, enhancing the validity and applicability of research findings in practical and real-world contexts. 

Let’s look at some field research examples to understand this concept better.

Field research examples

1. study of indigenous tribes.

Researchers visit and live among indigenous communities to study their cultures, traditions, languages, and social structures firsthand. 

They observe daily life, participate in rituals and activities, and conduct interviews to understand how these communities function and interact with the surrounding environment.

2. Urban ethnography

This involves studying people’s behaviors, interactions, and cultures in urban settings like cities or neighborhoods. 

Researchers immerse themselves in these environments to observe social dynamics, community relationships, and cultural practices unique to urban life. This helps them understand how urban societies work and evolve.

3. Wildlife tracking

Researchers use various techniques, such as GPS collars, camera traps, and direct observation, to track and study animals in their natural habitats. 

The behaviors of wildlife, migration patterns, preferred habitats, and the effects of environmental changes on animal populations are all better understood by researchers because of this fieldwork.

4. Consumer behavior studies

Researchers conduct field research in shopping malls, retail stores, or online platforms to observe and analyze consumer behavior. 

They study how people make purchasing decisions, their preferences for products or services, and their overall shopping experiences. This research is crucial for businesses to understand market trends and consumer needs.

5. Usability testing in context

This involves testing the usability of products or services in real-world settings where they are used. Researchers observe how users interact with devices, software, websites, or apps to identify usability issues, user preferences, and areas for improvement. 

Usability testing in context provides insights into how well products meet user needs and expectations in their everyday environments.

You may like to read about the difference between field studies vs ethnographic studies vs contextual inquiry

Reasons for conducting a field study

Field study is essential for gaining deep insights and understanding across various disciplines due to several key reasons:

1. Contextual understanding

Field research allows researchers to study phenomena in their natural environments, providing a contextual understanding beyond controlled settings. It lets them observe how environment, culture, and social dynamics influence behaviors and outcomes. 

For example, studying how people interact in their neighborhoods gives insights that might be missed in a lab.

2. Behavioral insights

Field research yields authentic and nuanced behavioral insights by observing behaviors directly in real-world settings. Researchers can see how people react in specific situations, which helps them understand decision-making processes, habits, and responses to stimuli. 

This direct observation is crucial for developing theories that accurately reflect real-life behaviors.

3. Cultural and social insights

Field research is invaluable for studying cultural practices, traditions, and social structures within natural contexts. It provides opportunities to immerse in diverse communities and understand their values, rituals, and daily lives. 

This field research fosters cultural sensitivity and enhances understanding of societal norms, helping researchers appreciate and respect cultural diversity.

4. Exploratory research

Field research often serves as exploratory research, where researchers explore new phenomena or test hypotheses in real-world settings. It allows for flexible and adaptive methods to uncover unexpected findings or patterns that might not be apparent in theoretical frameworks alone. 

This exploratory nature of field research contributes to expanding knowledge and generating new ideas.

5. Intervention and application

Field research also plays a crucial role in applied research and interventions. By studying problems or challenges in situ, researchers can develop and test practical solutions tailored to specific contexts. 

This approach ensures that interventions are relevant, practical, and feasible, addressing real-world issues directly.

Also, read why field research is needed across different disciplines

When is field research conducted?

Field research is conducted across diverse contexts and disciplines to explore, describe, evaluate, and monitor phenomena in their natural settings. It provides invaluable insights into real-world complexities and behaviors.

1. Exploratory studies

Field research is often conducted in exploratory studies when researchers aim to investigate new phenomena or explore unfamiliar topics. 

By immersing themselves in the field, researchers gather preliminary data and insights that help formulate hypotheses or refine research questions for further study.

2. Descriptive studies

In descriptive studies, field research describes and documents specific behaviors, characteristics, or phenomena in their natural settings. 

Researchers observe and record details without manipulating variables, aiming to comprehensively understand what exists and how it functions in real-world contexts.

3. Evaluation and monitoring

Field research is crucial for evaluating programs, policies, or interventions implemented in real-world settings. Researchers conduct ongoing monitoring to assess outcomes, measure impacts, and identify areas for improvement. 

This type of research helps stakeholders make informed decisions based on empirical data and feedback from the field.

4. Longitudinal studies

Longitudinal studies involve observing subjects over extended periods, sometimes years or decades, to track changes or developments over time. 

Field research in longitudinal studies allows researchers to capture evolving behaviors, trends, and influences within natural environments, providing insights into developmental trajectories or long-term effects.

5. Cross-cultural comparisons

Field research is essential for cross-cultural comparisons to understand how behaviors, beliefs, or social practices vary across different cultures or geographical regions. 

Researchers collect data from multiple cultural contexts, comparing similarities, differences, and underlying factors that shape cultural variations.

Types of field research

Field research encompasses various methodologies tailored to different research objectives and data collection approaches:

1. Qualitative field research

This type of field research focuses on understanding phenomena through in-depth exploration and interpretation of experiences, behaviors, and social interactions within natural settings. 

Researchers use participant observation, interviews, and open-ended surveys to gather rich, descriptive data. This approach emphasizes capturing meanings, perceptions, and contextual factors that shape individuals’ experiences and behaviors.

2. Quantitative field research

Quantitative field research involves collecting numerical data and analyzing it statistically to identify patterns, relationships, and trends. Researchers use structured surveys, experiments, or systematic observations to gather data from large samples in real-world environments. 

This approach emphasizes measurement, objectivity, and generalizability of findings, allowing researchers to draw statistically valid conclusions about populations or phenomena.

3. Mixed methods field research

Mixed methods is a type of field research that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to leverage their strengths and comprehensively understand complex phenomena. Researchers integrate data collection methods and analyses to triangulate findings, enhancing the validity and depth of research outcomes. 

This method gives researchers a more comprehensive understanding of research issues by enabling them to capture both the depth of qualitative insights and the breadth of quantitative data.

Field research methods

The field research methods employ various ways to collect data and gain insights directly from natural settings:

1. Participant observation

Researchers immerse themselves in the studied environment, actively participating in activities and observing behaviors firsthand. With this approach, social interactions, user behaviors, and cultural customs can be thoroughly understood in natural settings.

2. Interviews and focus groups

Researchers conduct structured or semi-structured interviews with individuals or facilitate group discussions in focus groups. These methods gather qualitative data through direct interaction, probing questions, and group dynamics, offering insights into attitudes, perceptions, and experiences.

3. Surveys and questionnaires

This type of field study method collects large quantitative data from respondents. Researchers design structured instruments to gather information on attitudes, behaviors, preferences, or demographics, providing statistical insights into population patterns and trends.

4. Document analysis

Researchers analyze written or recorded materials relevant to the research topic, such as texts, reports, archives, or multimedia sources. Document analysis uncovers historical context, policy documents, organizational records, or cultural artifacts, offering valuable insights into trends, perspectives, and changes over time.

5. Sampling techniques

This technique selects a representative subset of the population for study. Researchers use methods such as random, stratified, or purposive sampling to ensure the sample reflects the diversity and characteristics of the larger population, enhancing the generalizability of findings.

6. Field experiments

Researchers carry out controlled experiments in natural environments to change variables and track their impact on relevant outcomes. Field experiments allow researchers to study cause-and-effect relationships in real-world conditions, providing empirical evidence to test hypotheses and inform practical applications.

Steps to conduct a field study

Conducting a field study involves several systematic steps to ensure rigorous research and meaningful findings:

1. Define research objectives

Define the objective and goal of the study, outlining what you aim to achieve and the questions you seek to answer through your research in the field.

2. Literature review

Conduct a thorough examination of existing literature on your research topic. This will assist you in identifying knowledge gaps, understanding theoretical frameworks, and guiding your research design and methods.

3. Research design

Develop a research design that aligns with your objectives and chosen methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods). Decide on data collection methods, sampling strategies, and experimental or observational techniques.

4. Obtain permissions and clearances

Obtain necessary permissions and clearances from relevant authorities or stakeholders, especially if your study involves human subjects, sensitive environments, or requires access to restricted areas.

5. Prepare data collection tools

Design and prepare data collection tools, such as interview guides, survey questionnaires, observation protocols, or experimental setups. Ensure these tools are valid, reliable, and appropriate for your research context.

6. Pilot testing

Launch a pilot test of your data collection tools and procedures to identify and address any practical issues, refine questions, and ensure the effectiveness of your approach before full-scale implementation.

7. Data collection

Collect data according to your planned methodology and procedures. This may involve conducting interviews, administering surveys, observing behaviors, or performing experiments in the field setting.

8. Data analysis

Examine the collected data using appropriate analytical techniques. This may involve coding, thematic analysis, or narrative interpretation for qualitative data. Using statistical methods to analyze patterns, relationships, and trends for quantitative data.

9. Validation and triangulation

Validate your findings by comparing and contrasting data from different sources or methods (triangulation). This helps to ensure the reliability and credibility of your results by corroborating evidence across multiple perspectives.

10. Report and dissemination

Compile your findings into a comprehensive report with an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions. Communicate your findings, implications, and recommendations for future research or practical applications.

In conclusion, understanding field research meaning is essential for understanding real-world user needs and informing the design of effective, user-centered solutions. By immersing themselves in the natural environment, researchers can gain invaluable insights that may not be captured through other methods. 

At Octet , our experienced field researchers leverage various field research methods to uncover these insights, which we then translate into actionable recommendations to drive innovation and foster deeper connections between products/services and users. 

By partnering with Octet, you can harness the power of field research to create solutions that truly resonate with your target audience.

1. Why is field study important?

Field research is essential because it allows researchers to gain a deep, contextual understanding of real-world user needs and behaviors. 

By immersing themselves in the natural environment, researchers can uncover insights that may not be captured through other research methods, such as surveys or lab studies. 

These insights can inform the design process, leading to more effective, user-centered solutions that resonate with the target audience.

2. What is the objective of the field study?

The primary objective of field research is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the user’s environment, experiences, and pain points. 

Through the observation of users in their natural environments, researchers are able to determine the fundamental aspects that impact their decisions and behaviors. 

This information can then guide the design and development of products, services, or interventions more appropriate for the target population.

3. What do you mean by field of study?

The term “field of study” refers to the specific academic or professional discipline in which field research is conducted. 

This can include various fields, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, marketing, product design, or human-computer interaction. 

The field of study determines the research methods, theoretical frameworks, and analytical approaches used to collect and interpret the data gathered through field research.

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Chapter 12: Field Research: A Qualitative Research Technique

12.1 Field Research: What Is It?

Field research is a qualitative method of data collection aimed at understanding, observing, and interacting with people in their natural settings. In the context of research, observation is more than just looking. It involves looking in a planned and strategic way with a purpose (Palys & Atchison, 2014, p. 189). As such, when social scientists talk about being in “the field,” they are talking about being out in the real world and involved in the everyday lives of the people they are studying. Sometimes researchers use the terms ethnography or participant observation to refer to this method of data collection; the former is most commonly used in anthropology, while the latter is used commonly in sociology. For our purposes, we will use two main terms: field research and participant observation . You might think of field research as an umbrella term that includes the myriad activities that field researchers engage in when they collect data: they participate; they observe; they usually interview some of the people they observe; and they typically analyze documents or artifacts created by the people they observe.

Researchers conducting participant observation vary in the extent to which they participate or observe. Palys and Atchison (2014, p. 198) refer to this as the “participant-observer continuum,” ranging from complete participant to complete observer. This continuum is demonstrated in Figure 12.1. However, these researchers, as to do other researchers, question whether a researcher can be at the “complete observer” end of the continuum. Rather, they contend, it is increasingly acknowledged that, even as an observer, the researcher is participating in what is being studied and therefore cannot really be a complete observer.

Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that there are pros and cons associated with both aspects of the participant/observer’s role. For example, depending upon how fully researchers observer their subjects (as opposed to participating), they may miss important aspects of group interaction and may not have the opportunity to fully grasp what life is like for the people they observe. At the same time, sitting back and observing may grant researchers opportunities to see interactions that they would miss, were they more involved.

Ethnography is not to be confused with ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology will be defined and described in Chapter 13

Participation has the benefit of allowing researchers a real taste of life in the group that they study. Some argue that participation is the only way to understand what it is that is being investigated. On the other hand, fully immersed participants may find themselves in situations that they would rather not face but from which cannot excuse themselves because they have adopted the role of a fully immersed participant. Further, participants who do not reveal themselves as researchers must face the ethical quandary of possibly deceiving their subjects. In reality, much field research lies somewhere near the middle of the observer/participant continuum. Field researchers typically participate to at least some extent in their field sites, but there are also times when they may strictly observe.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Article Contents

Introduction, what is fieldwork, purpose of fieldwork, physical safety, mental wellbeing and affect, ethical considerations, remote fieldwork, concluding thoughts, acknowledgments, funder information.

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Field Research: A Graduate Student's Guide

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Ezgi Irgil, Anne-Kathrin Kreft, Myunghee Lee, Charmaine N Willis, Kelebogile Zvobgo, Field Research: A Graduate Student's Guide, International Studies Review , Volume 23, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 1495–1517, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viab023

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What is field research? Is it just for qualitative scholars? Must it be done in a foreign country? How much time in the field is “enough”? A lack of disciplinary consensus on what constitutes “field research” or “fieldwork” has left graduate students in political science underinformed and thus underequipped to leverage site-intensive research to address issues of interest and urgency across the subfields. Uneven training in Ph.D. programs has also left early-career researchers underprepared for the logistics of fieldwork, from developing networks and effective sampling strategies to building respondents’ trust, and related issues of funding, physical safety, mental health, research ethics, and crisis response. Based on the experience of five junior scholars, this paper offers answers to questions that graduate students puzzle over, often without the benefit of others’ “lessons learned.” This practical guide engages theory and praxis, in support of an epistemologically and methodologically pluralistic discipline.

¿Qué es la investigación de campo? ¿Es solo para académicos cualitativos? ¿Debe realizarse en un país extranjero? ¿Cuánto tiempo en el terreno es “suficiente”? La falta de consenso disciplinario con respecto a qué constituye la “investigación de campo” o el “trabajo de campo” ha causado que los estudiantes de posgrado en ciencias políticas estén poco informados y, por lo tanto, capacitados de manera insuficiente para aprovechar la investigación exhaustiva en el sitio con el objetivo de abordar los asuntos urgentes y de interés en los subcampos. La capacitación desigual en los programas de doctorado también ha provocado que los investigadores en las primeras etapas de su carrera estén poco preparados para la logística del trabajo de campo, desde desarrollar redes y estrategias de muestreo efectivas hasta generar la confianza de las personas que facilitan la información, y las cuestiones relacionadas con la financiación, la seguridad física, la salud mental, la ética de la investigación y la respuesta a las situaciones de crisis. Con base en la experiencia de cinco académicos novatos, este artículo ofrece respuestas a las preguntas que desconciertan a los estudiantes de posgrado, a menudo, sin el beneficio de las “lecciones aprendidas” de otras personas. Esta guía práctica incluye teoría y praxis, en apoyo de una disciplina pluralista desde el punto de vista epistemológico y metodológico.

En quoi consiste la recherche de terain ? Est-elle uniquement réservée aux chercheurs qualitatifs ? Doit-elle être effectuée dans un pays étranger ? Combien de temps faut-il passer sur le terrain pour que ce soit « suffisant » ? Le manque de consensus disciplinaire sur ce qui constitue une « recherche de terrain » ou un « travail de terrain » a laissé les étudiants diplômés en sciences politiques sous-informés et donc sous-équipés pour tirer parti des recherches de terrain intensives afin d'aborder les questions d'intérêt et d'urgence dans les sous-domaines. L'inégalité de formation des programmes de doctorat a mené à une préparation insuffisante des chercheurs en début de carrière à la logistique du travail de terrain, qu'il s'agisse du développement de réseaux et de stratégies d’échantillonnage efficaces, de l'acquisition de la confiance des personnes interrogées ou des questions de financement, de sécurité physique, de santé mentale, d’éthique de recherche et de réponse aux crises qui y sont associées. Cet article s'appuie sur l'expérience de cinq jeunes chercheurs pour proposer des réponses aux questions que les étudiants diplômés se posent, souvent sans bénéficier des « enseignements tirés » par les autres. Ce guide pratique engage théorie et pratique en soutien à une discipline épistémologiquement et méthodologiquement pluraliste.

Days before embarking on her first field research trip, a Ph.D. student worries about whether she will be able to collect the qualitative data that she needs for her dissertation. Despite sending dozens of emails, she has received only a handful of responses to her interview requests. She wonders if she will be able to gain more traction in-country. Meanwhile, in the midst of drafting her thesis proposal, an M.A. student speculates about the feasibility of his project, given a modest budget. Thousands of miles away from home, a postdoc is concerned about their safety, as protests erupt outside their window and state security forces descend into the streets.

These anecdotes provide a small glimpse into the concerns of early-career researchers undertaking significant projects with a field research component. Many of these fieldwork-related concerns arise from an unfortunate shortage in curricular offerings for qualitative and mixed-method research in political science graduate programs ( Emmons and Moravcsik 2020 ), 1 as well as the scarcity of instructional materials for qualitative and mixed-method research, relative to those available for quantitative research ( Elman, Kapiszewski, and Kirilova 2015 ; Kapiszewski, MacLean, and Read 2015 ; Mosley 2013 ). A recent survey among the leading United States Political Science programs in Comparative Politics and International Relations found that among graduate students who have carried out international fieldwork, 62 percent had not received any formal fieldwork training and only 20 percent felt very or mostly prepared for their fieldwork ( Schwartz and Cronin-Furman 2020 , 7–8). This shortfall in training and instruction means that many young researchers are underprepared for the logistics of fieldwork, from developing networks and effective sampling strategies to building respondents’ trust. In addition, there is a notable lack of preparation around issues of funding, physical safety, mental health, research ethics, and crisis response. This is troubling, as field research is highly valued and, in some parts of the field, it is all but expected, for instance in comparative politics.

Beyond subfield-specific expectations, research that leverages multiple types of data and methods, including fieldwork, is one of the ways that scholars throughout the discipline can more fully answer questions of interest and urgency. Indeed, multimethod work, a critical means by which scholars can parse and evaluate causal pathways, is on the rise ( Weller and Barnes 2016 ). The growing appearance of multimethod research in leading journals and university presses makes adequate training and preparation all the more significant ( Seawright 2016 ; Nexon 2019 ).

We are five political scientists interested in providing graduate students and other early-career researchers helpful resources for field research that we lacked when we first began our work. Each of us has recently completed or will soon complete a Ph.D. at a United States or Swedish university, though we come from many different national backgrounds. We have conducted field research in our home countries and abroad. From Colombia and Guatemala to the United States, from Europe to Turkey, and throughout East and Southeast Asia, we have spanned the globe to investigate civil society activism and transitional justice in post-violence societies, conflict-related sexual violence, social movements, authoritarianism and contentious politics, and the everyday politics and interactions between refugees and host-country citizens.

While some of us have studied in departments that offer strong training in field research methods, most of us have had to self-teach, learning through trial and error. Some of us have also been fortunate to participate in short courses and workshops hosted by universities such as the Consortium for Qualitative Research Methods and interdisciplinary institutions such as the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Recognizing that these opportunities are not available to or feasible for all, and hoping to ease the concerns of our more junior colleagues, we decided to compile our experiences and recommendations for first-time field researchers.

Our experiences in the field differ in several key respects, from the time we spent in the field to the locations we visited, and how we conducted our research. The diversity of our experiences, we hope, will help us reach and assist the broadest possible swath of graduate students interested in field research. Some of us have spent as little as ten days in a given country or as much as several months, in some instances visiting a given field site location just once and in other instances returning several times. At times, we have been able to plan weeks and months in advance. Other times, we have quickly arranged focus groups and impromptu interviews. Other times still, we have completed interviews virtually, when research participants were in remote locations or when we ourselves were unable to travel, of note during the coronavirus pandemic. We have worked in countries where we are fluent or have professional proficiency in the language, and in countries where we have relied on interpreters. We have worked in settings with precarious security as well as in locations that feel as comfortable as home. Our guide is not intended to be prescriptive or exhaustive. What we offer is a set of experience-based suggestions to be implemented as deemed relevant and appropriate by the researcher and their advisor(s).

In terms of the types of research and data sources and collection, we have conducted archival research, interviews, focus groups, and ethnographies with diplomats, bureaucrats, military personnel, ex-combatants, civil society advocates, survivors of political violence, refugees, and ordinary citizens. We have grappled with ethical dilemmas, chief among them how to get useful data for our research projects in ways that exceed the minimal standards of human subjects’ research evaluation panels. Relatedly, we have contemplated how to use our platforms to give back to the individuals and communities who have so generously lent us their time and knowledge, and shared with us their personal and sometimes harrowing stories.

Our target audience is first and foremost graduate students and early-career researchers who are interested in possibly conducting fieldwork but who either (1) do not know the full potential or value of fieldwork, (2) know the potential and value of fieldwork but think that it is excessively cost-prohibitive or otherwise infeasible, or (3) who have the interest, the will, and the means but not necessarily the know-how. We also hope that this resource will be of value to graduate programs, as they endeavor to better support students interested in or already conducting field research. Further, we target instructional faculty and graduate advisors (and other institutional gatekeepers like journal and book reviewers), to show that fieldwork does not have to be year-long, to give just one example. Instead, the length of time spent in the field is a function of the aims and scope of a given project. We also seek to formalize and normalize the idea of remote field research, whether conducted because of security concerns in conflict zones, for instance, or because of health and safety concerns, like the Covid-19 pandemic. Accordingly, researchers in the field for shorter stints or who conduct fieldwork remotely should not be penalized.

We note that several excellent resources on fieldwork such as the bibliography compiled by Advancing Conflict Research (2020) catalogue an impressive list of articles addressing questions such as ethics, safety, mental health, reflexivity, and methods. Further resources can be found about the positionality of the researcher in the field while engaging vulnerable communities, such as in the research field of migration ( Jacobsen and Landau 2003 ; Carling, Bivand Erdal, and Ezzati 2014 ; Nowicka and Cieslik 2014 ; Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz 2019 ). However, little has been written beyond conflict-affected contexts, fragile settings, and vulnerable communities. Moreover, as we consulted different texts and resources, we found no comprehensive guide to fieldwork explicitly written with graduate students in mind. It is this gap that we aim to fill.

In this paper, we address five general categories of questions that graduate students puzzle over, often without the benefit of others’ “lessons learned.” First, What is field research? Is it just for qualitative scholars? Must it be conducted in a foreign country? How much time in the field is “enough”? Second, What is the purpose of fieldwork? When does it make sense to travel to a field site to collect data? How can fieldwork data be used? Third, What are the nuts and bolts? How does one get ready and how can one optimize limited time and financial resources? Fourth, How does one conduct fieldwork safely? What should a researcher do to keep themselves, research assistants, and research subjects safe? What measures should they take to protect their mental health? Fifth, How does one conduct ethical, beneficent field research?

Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic has impressed upon the discipline the volatility of research projects centered around in-person fieldwork. Lockdowns and closed borders left researchers sequestered at home and unable to travel, forced others to cut short any trips already begun, and unexpectedly confined others still to their fieldwork sites. Other factors that may necessitate a (spontaneous) readjustment of planned field research include natural disasters, a deteriorating security situation in the field site, researcher illness, and unexpected changes in personal circumstances. We, therefore, conclude with a section on the promise and potential pitfalls of remote (or virtual) fieldwork. Throughout this guide, we engage theory and praxis to support an epistemologically and methodologically pluralistic discipline.

The concept of “fieldwork” is not well defined in political science. While several symposia discuss the “nuts and bolts” of conducting research in the field within the pages of political science journals, few ever define it ( Ortbals and Rincker 2009 ; Hsueh, Jensenius, and Newsome 2014 ). Defining the concept of fieldwork is important because assumptions about what it is and what it is not underpin any suggestions for conducting it. A lack of disciplinary consensus about what constitutes “fieldwork,” we believe, explains the lack of a unified definition. Below, we discuss three areas of current disagreement about what “fieldwork” is, including the purpose of fieldwork, where it occurs, and how long it should be. We follow this by offering our definition of fieldwork.

First, we find that many in the discipline view fieldwork as squarely in the domain of qualitative research, whether interpretivist or positivist. However, field research can also serve quantitative projects—for example, by providing crucial context, supporting triangulation, or illustrating causal mechanisms. For instance, Kreft (2019) elaborated her theory of women's civil society mobilization in response to conflict-related sexual violence based on interviews she carried out in Colombia. She then examined cross-national patterns through statistical analysis. Conversely, Willis's research on the United States military in East Asia began with quantitative data collection and analysis of protest events before turning to fieldwork to understand why protests occurred in some instances but not others. Researchers can also find quantifiable data in the field that is otherwise unavailable to them at home ( Read 2006 ; Chambers-Ju 2014 ; Jensenius 2014 ). Accordingly, fieldwork is not in the domain of any particular epistemology or methodology as its purpose is to acquire data for further information.

Second, comparative politics and international relations scholars often opine that fieldwork requires leaving the country in which one's institution is based. Instead, we propose that what matters most is the nature of the research project, not the locale. For instance, some of us in the international relations subfield have interviewed representatives of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), whose headquarters are generally located in Global North countries. For someone pursuing a Ph.D. in the United States and writing on transnational advocacy networks, interviews with INGO representatives in New York certainly count as fieldwork ( Zvobgo 2020 ). Similarly, a graduate student who returns to her home country to interview refugees and native citizens is conducting a field study as much as a researcher for whom the context is wholly foreign. Such interviews can provide necessary insights and information that would not have been gained otherwise—one of the key reasons researchers conduct fieldwork in the first place. In other instances, conducting any in-person research is simply not possible, due to financial constraints, safety concerns, or other reasons. For example, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many researchers to shift their face-to-face research plans to remote data collection, either over the phone or virtually ( Howlett 2021 , 2). For some research projects, gathering data through remote methods may yield the same if not similar information than in-person research ( Howlett 2021 , 3–4). As Howlett (2021 , 11) notes, digital platforms may offer researchers the ability to “embed ourselves in other contexts from a distance” and glimpse into our subjects’ lives in ways similar to in-person research. By adopting a broader definition of fieldwork, researchers can be more flexible in getting access to data sources and interacting with research subjects.

Third, there is a tendency, especially among comparativists, to only count fieldwork that spans the better part of a year; even “surgical strike” field research entails one to three months, according to some scholars ( Ortbals and Rincker 2009 ; Weiss, Hicken, and Kuhonta 2017 ). The emphasis on spending as much time as possible in the field is likely due to ethnographic research traditions, reflected in classics such as James Scott's Weapons of the Weak , which entail year-long stints of research. However, we suggest that the appropriate amount of time in the field should be assessed on a project-by-project basis. Some studies require the researcher to be in the field for long periods; others do not. For example, Willis's research on the discourse around the United States’ military presence in overseas host communities has required months in the field. By contrast, Kreft only needed ten days in New York to carry out interviews with diplomats and United Nations staff, in a context with which she already had some familiarity from a prior internship. Likewise, Zvobgo spent a couple of weeks in her field research sites, conducting interviews with directors and managers of prominent human rights nongovernmental organizations. This population is not so large as to require a whole month or even a few months. This has also been the case for Irgil, as she had spent one month in the field site conducting interviews with ordinary citizens. The goal of the project was to acquire information on citizens’ perceptions of refugees. As we discuss in the next section, when deciding how long to spend in the field, scholars must consider the information their project requires and consider the practicalities of fieldwork, notably cost.

Thus, we highlight three essential points in fieldwork and offer a definition accordingly: fieldwork involves acquiring information, using any set of appropriate data collection techniques, for qualitative, quantitative, or experimental analysis through embedded research whose location and duration is dependent on the project. We argue that adopting such a definition of “fieldwork” is necessary to include the multitude of forms fieldwork can take, including remote methods, whose value and challenges the Covid-19 pandemic has impressed upon the discipline.

When does a researcher need to conduct fieldwork? Fieldwork can be effective for (1) data collection, (2) theory building, and (3) theory testing. First, when a researcher is interested in a research topic, yet they could not find an available and/or reliable data source for the topic, fieldwork could provide the researcher with plenty of options. Some research agendas can require researchers to visit archives to review historical documents. For example, Greitens (2016) visited national archives in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States to find historical documents about the development of coercive institutions in past authoritarian governments for her book, Dictators and Their Secret Police . Also, newly declassified archival documents can open new possibilities for researchers to examine restricted topics. To illustrate, thanks to the newly released archival records of the Chinese Communist Party's communications, and exchange of visits with the European communist world, Sarotte (2012) was able to study the Party's decision to crack down on Tiananmen protesters, which had previously been deemed as an unstudiable topic due to the limited data.

Other research agendas can require researchers to conduct (semistructured) in-depth interviews to understand human behavior or a situation more closely, for example, by revealing the meanings of concepts for people and showing how people perceive the world. For example, O'Brien and Li (2005) conducted in-depth interviews with activists, elites, and villagers to understand how these actors interact with each other and what are the outcomes of the interaction in contentious movements in rural China. Through research, they revealed that protests have deeply influenced all these actors’ minds, a fact not directly observable without in-depth interviews.

Finally, data collection through fieldwork should not be confined to qualitative data ( Jensenius 2014 ). While some quantitative datasets can be easily compiled or accessed through use of the internet or contact with data-collection agencies, other datasets can only be built or obtained through relationships with “gatekeepers” such as government officials, and thus require researchers to visit the field ( Jensenius 2014 ). Researchers can even collect their own quantitative datasets by launching surveys or quantifying data contained in archives. In a nutshell, fieldwork will allow researchers to use different techniques to collect and access original/primary data sources, whether these are qualitative, quantitative, or experimental in nature, and regardless of the intended method of analysis. 2

But fieldwork is not just for data collection as such. Researchers can accomplish two other fundamental elements of the research process: theory building and theory testing. When a researcher finds a case where existing theories about a phenomenon do not provide plausible explanations, they can build a theory through fieldwork ( Geddes 2003 ). Lee's experience provides a good example. When studying the rise of a protest movement in South Korea for her dissertation, Lee applied commonly discussed social movement theories, grievances, political opportunity, resource mobilization, and repression, to explain the movement's eruption and found that these theories do not offer a convincing explanation for the protest movement. She then moved on to fieldwork and conducted interviews with the movement participants to understand their motivations. Finally, through those interviews, she offered an alternative theory that the protest participants’ collective identity shaped during the authoritarian past played a unifying factor and eventually led them to participate in the movement. Her example shows that theorization can take place through careful review and rigorous inference during fieldwork.

Moreover, researchers can test their theory through fieldwork. Quantitative observational data has limitations in revealing causal mechanisms ( Esarey 2017 ). Therefore, many political scientists turn their attention to conducting field experiments or lab-in-the-field experiments to reveal causality ( Druckman et al. 2006 ; Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov 2013 ; Finseraas and Kotsadam 2017 ), or to leveraging in-depth insights or historical records gained through qualitative or archival research in process-tracing ( Collier 2011 ; Ricks and Liu 2018 ). Surveys and survey experiments may also be useful tools to substantiate a theoretical story or test a theory ( Marston 2020 ). Of course, for most Ph.D. students, especially those not affiliated with more extensive research projects, some of these options will be financially prohibitive.

A central concern for graduate students, especially those working with a small budget and limited time, is optimizing time in the field and integrating remote work. We offer three pieces of advice: have a plan, build in flexibility, and be strategic, focusing on collecting data that are unavailable at home. We also discuss working with local translators or research assistants. Before we turn to these more practical issues arising during fieldwork, we address a no less important issue: funding.

The challenge of securing funds is often overlooked in discussions of what constitutes field research. Months- or year-long in-person research can be cost-prohibitive, something academic gatekeepers must consider when evaluating “what counts” and “what is enough.” Unlike their predecessors, many graduate students today have a significant amount of debt and little savings. 3 Additionally, if researchers are not able to procure funding, they have to pay out of pocket and possibly take on more debt. Not only is in-person fieldwork costly, but researchers may also have to forego working while they are in the field, making long stretches in the field infeasible for some.

For researchers whose fieldwork involves travelling to another location, procuring funding via grants, fellowships, or other sources is a necessity, regardless of how long one plans to be in the field. A good mantra for applying for research funding is “apply early and often” ( Kelsky 2015 , 110). Funding applications take a considerable amount of time to prepare, from writing research statements to requesting letters of recommendation. Even adapting one's materials for different applications takes time. Not only is the application process itself time-consuming, but the time between applying for and receiving funds, if successful, can be quite long, from several months to a year. For example, after defending her prospectus in May 2019, Willis began applying to funding sources for her dissertation, all of which had deadlines between June and September. She received notifications between November and January; however, funds from her successful applications were not available until March and April, almost a year later. 4 Accordingly, we recommend applying for funding as early as possible; this not only increases one's chances of hitting the ground running in the field, but the application process can also help clarify the goals and parameters of one's research.

Graduate students should also apply often for funding opportunities. There are different types of funding for fieldwork: some are larger, more competitive grants such as the National Science Foundation Political Science Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in the United States, others, including sources through one's own institution, are smaller. Some countries, like Sweden, boast a plethora of smaller funding agencies that disburse grants of 20,000–30,0000 Swedish Kronor (approx. 2,500–3,500 U.S. dollars) to Ph.D. students in the social sciences. Listings of potential funding sources are often found on various websites including those belonging to universities, professional organizations (such as the American Political Science Association or the European Consortium for Political Research), and governmental institutions dealing with foreign affairs. Once you have identified fellowships and grants for which you and your project are a good match, we highly recommend soliciting information and advice from colleagues who have successfully applied for them. This can include asking them to share their applications with you, and if possible, to have them, another colleague or set of colleagues read through your project description and research plan (especially for bigger awards) to ensure that you have made the best possible case for why you should be selected. While both large and small pots of funding are worth applying for, many researchers end up funding their fieldwork through several small grants or fellowships. One small award may not be sufficient to fund the entirety of one's fieldwork, but several may. For example, Willis's fieldwork in Japan and South Korea was supported through fellowships within each country. Similarly, Irgil was able to conduct her fieldwork abroad through two different and relatively smaller grants by applying to them each year.

Of course, situations vary in different countries with respect to what kinds of grants from what kinds of funders are available. An essential part of preparing for fieldwork is researching the funding landscape well in advance, even as early as the start of the Ph.D. We encourage first-time field researchers to be aware that universities and departments may themselves not be aware of the full range of possible funds available, so it is always a good idea to do your own research and watch research-related social media channels. The amount of funding needed thereby depends on the nature of one's project and how long one intends to be in the field. As we elaborate in the next section, scholars should think carefully about their project goals, the data required to meet those goals, and the requisite time to attain them. For some projects, even a couple of weeks in the field is sufficient to get the needed information.

Preparing to Enter “the field”

It is important to prepare for the field as much as possible. What kind of preparations do researchers need? For someone conducting interviews with NGO representatives, this might involve identifying the largest possible pool of potential respondents, securing their contact information, sending them study invitation letters, finding a mutually agreeable time to meet, and pulling together short biographies for each interviewee in order to use your time together most effectively. If you plan to travel to conduct interviews, you should reach out to potential respondents roughly four to six weeks prior to your arrival. For individuals who do not respond, you can follow up one to two weeks before you arrive and, if needed, once more when you are there. This is still no guarantee for success, of course. For Kreft, contacting potential interviewees in Colombia initially proved more challenging than anticipated, as many of the people she targeted did not respond to her emails. It turned out that many Colombians have a preference for communicating via phone or, in particular, WhatsApp. Some of those who responded to her emails sent in advance of her field trip asked her to simply be in touch once she was in the country, to set up appointments on short notice. This made planning and arranging her interview schedule more complicated. Therefore, a general piece of advice is to research your target population's preferred communication channels and mediums in the field site if email requests yield no or few responses.

In general, we note for the reader that contacting potential research participants should come after one has designed an interview questionnaire (plus an informed consent protocol) and sought and received, where applicable, approval from institutional review boards (IRBs) or other ethical review procedures in place (both at one's home institution/in the country of the home institution as well as in the country where one plans to conduct research if travelling abroad). The most obvious advantage of having the interview questionnaire in place and having secured all necessary institutional approvals before you start contacting potential interviewees is that you have a clearer idea of the universe of individuals you would like to interview, and for what purpose. Therefore, it is better to start sooner rather than later and be mindful of “high seasons,” when institutional and ethical review boards are receiving, processing, and making decisions on numerous proposals. It may take a few months for them to issue approvals.

On the subject of ethics and review panels, we encourage you to consider talking openly and honestly with your supervisors and/or funders about the situations where a written consent form may not be suitable and might need to be replaced with “verbal consent.” For instance, doing fieldwork in politically unstable contexts, highly scrutinized environments, or vulnerable communities, like refugees, might create obstacles for the interviewees as well as the researcher. The literature discusses the dilemma in offering the interviewees anonymity and requesting signed written consent in addition to the emphasis on total confidentiality ( Jacobsen and Landau 2003 ; Mackenzie, McDowell, and Pittaway 2007 ; Saunders, Kitzinger, and Kitzinger 2015 ). Therefore, in those situations, the researcher might need to take the initiative on how to act while doing the interviews as rigorously as possible. In her fieldwork, Irgil faced this situation as the political context of Turkey did not guarantee that there would not be any adverse consequences for interviewees on both sides of her story: citizens of Turkey and Syrian refugees. Consequently, she took hand-written notes and asked interviewees for their verbal consent in a safe interview atmosphere. This is something respondents greatly appreciated ( Irgil 2020 ).

Ethical considerations, of course, also affect the research design itself, with ramifications for fieldwork. When Kreft began developing her Ph.D. proposal to study women's political and civil society mobilization in response to conflict-related sexual violence, she initially aimed to recruit interviewees from the universe of victims of this violence, to examine variation among those who did and those who did not mobilize politically. As a result of deeper engagement with the literature on researching conflict-related sexual violence, conversations with senior colleagues who had interviewed victims, and critical self-reflection of her status as a researcher (with no background in psychology or social work), she decided to change focus and shift toward representatives of civil society organizations and victims’ associations. This constituted a major reconfiguration of her research design, from one geared toward identifying the factors that drive mobilization of victims toward using insights from interviews to understand better how those mobilize perceive and “make sense” of conflict-related sexual violence. Needless to say, this required alterations to research strategies and interview guides, including reassessing her planned fieldwork. Kreft's primary consideration was not to cause harm to her research participants, particularly in the form of re-traumatization. She opted to speak only with those women who on account of their work are used to speaking about conflict-related sexual violence. In no instance did she inquire about interviewees’ personal experiences with sexual violence, although several brought this up on their own during the interviews.

Finally, if you are conducting research in another country where you have less-than-professional fluency in the language, pre-fieldwork planning should include hiring a translator or research assistant, for example, through an online hiring platform like Upwork, or a local university. Your national embassy or consulate is another option; many diplomatic offices have lists of individuals who they have previously contracted. More generally, establishing contact with a local university can be beneficial, either in the form of a visiting researcher arrangement, which grants access to research groups and facilities like libraries or informally contacting individual researchers. The latter may have valuable insights into the local context, contacts to potential research participants, and they may even be able to recommend translators or research assistants. Kreft, for example, hired local research assistants recommended by researchers at a Bogotá-based university and remunerated them equivalent to the salary they would have received as graduate research assistants at the university, while also covering necessary travel expenses. Irgil, on the other hand, established contacts with native citizens and Syrian gatekeepers, who are shop owners in the area where she conducted her research because she had the opportunity to visit the fieldwork site multiple times.

Depending on the research agenda, researchers may visit national archives, local government offices, etc. Before visiting, researchers should contact these facilities and make sure the materials that they need are accessible. For example, Lee visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Archives to find the United States’ strategic evaluations on South Korea's dictator in the 1980s. Before her visit, she contacted librarians in the archives, telling them her visit plans and her research purpose. Librarians made suggestions on which categories she should start to review based on her research goal, and thus she was able to make a list of categories of the materials she needed, saving her a lot of her time.

Accessibility of and access to certain facilities/libraries can differ depending on locations/countries and types of facilities. Facilities in authoritarian countries might not be easily accessible to foreign researchers. Within democratic countries, some facilities are more restrictive than others. Situations like the pandemic or national holidays can also restrict accessibility. Therefore, researchers are well advised to do preliminary research on whether a certain facility opens during the time they visit and is accessible to researchers regardless of their citizenship status. Moreover, researchers must contact the staff of facilities to know whether identity verification is needed and if so, what kind of documents (photo I.D. or passport) should be exhibited.

Adapting to the Reality of the Field

Researchers need to be flexible because you may meet people you did not make appointments with, come across opportunities you did not expect, or stumble upon new ideas about collecting data in the field. These happenings will enrich your field experience and will ultimately be beneficial for your research. Similarly, researchers should not be discouraged by interviews that do not go according to plan; they present an opportunity to pursue relevant people who can provide an alternative path to your work. Note that planning ahead does not preclude fortuitous encounters or epiphanies. Rather, it provides a structure for them to happen.

If your fieldwork entails travelling abroad, you will also be able to recruit more interviewees once you arrive at your research site. In fact, you may have greater success in-country; not everyone is willing to respond to a cold email from an unknown researcher in a foreign country. In Irgil's fieldwork, she contacted store owners that are known in the area and who know the community. This eased her process of introduction into the community and recruiting interviewees. For Zvobgo, she had fewer than a dozen interviews scheduled when she travelled to Guatemala to study civil society activism and transitional justice since the internal armed conflict. But she was able to recruit additional participants in-country. Interviewees with whom she built a rapport connected her to other NGOs, government offices, and the United Nations country office, sometimes even making the call and scheduling interviews for her. Through snowball sampling, she was able to triple the number of participants. Likewise, snowball sampling was central to Kreft's recruitment of interview partners. Several of her interviewees connected her to highly relevant individuals she would never have been able to identify and contact based on web searches alone.

While in the field, you may nonetheless encounter obstacles that necessitate adjustments to your original plans. Once Kreft had arrived in Colombia, for example, it transpired quickly that carrying out in-person interviews in more remote/rural areas was near impossible given her means, as these were not easily accessible by bus/coach, further complicated by a complex security situation. Instead, she adjusted her research design and shifted her focus to the big cities, where most of the major civil society organizations are based. She complemented the in-person interviews carried out there with a smaller number of phone interviews with civil society activists in rural areas, and she was also able to meet a few activists operating in rural or otherwise inaccessible areas as they were visiting the major cities. The resulting focus on urban settings changed the kinds of generalizations she was able to make based on her fieldwork data and produced a somewhat different study than initially anticipated.

This also has been the case for Irgil, despite her prior arrangements with the Syrian gatekeepers, which required adjustments as in the case of Kreft. Irgil acquired research clearance one year before, during the interviews with native citizens, conducting the interviews with Syrian refugees. She also had her questionnaire ready based on the previously collected data and the media search she had conducted for over a year before travelling to the field site. As she was able to visit the field site multiple times, two months before conducting interviews with Syrian refugees, she developed a schedule with the Syrian gatekeepers and informants. Yet, once she was in the field, influenced by Turkey's recent political events and the policy of increasing control over Syrian refugees, half of the previously agreed informants changed their minds or did not want to participate in interviews. As Irgil was following the policies and the news related to Syrian refugees in Turkey closely, this did not come as that big of a surprise but challenged the previously developed strategy to recruit interviewees. Thus, she changed the strategy of finding interviewees in the field site, such as asking people, almost one by one, whether they would like to participate in the interview. Eventually, she could not find willing Syrian women refugees as she had planned, which resulted in a male-dominant sample. As researchers encounter such situations, it is essential to remind oneself that not everything can go according to plan, that “different” does not equate to “worse,” but that it is important to consider what changes to fieldwork data collection and sampling imply for the study's overall findings and the contribution it makes to the literature.

We should note that conducting interviews is very taxing—especially when opportunities multiply, as in Zvobgo's case. Depending on the project, each interview can take an hour, if not two or more. Hence, you should make a reasonable schedule: we recommend no more than two interviews per day. You do not want to have to cut off an interview because you need to rush to another one, whether the interviews are in-person or remote. And you do not want to be too exhausted to have a robust engagement with your respondent who is generously lending you their time. Limiting the number of interviews per day is also important to ensure that you can write comprehensive and meaningful fieldnotes, which becomes even more essential where it is not possible to audio-record your interviews. Also, be sure to remember to eat, stay hydrated, and try to get enough sleep.

Finally, whether to provide gifts or payments to the subject also requires adapting to the reality of the field. You must think about payments beforehand when you apply for IRB approval (or whatever other ethical review processes may be in place) since these applications usually contain questions about payments. Obviously, the first step is to carefully evaluate whether the gifts and payments provided can harm the subject or are likely to unduly affect the responses they will give in response to your questions. If that is not the case, you have to make payment decisions based on your budget, field situation, and difficulties in recruitment. Usually, payment of respondents is more common in survey research, whereas it is less common in interviews and focus groups.

Nevertheless, payment practices vary depending on the field and the target group. In some cases, it may become a custom to provide small gifts or payments when interviewing a certain group. In other cases, interviewees might be offended if they are provided with money. Therefore, knowing past practices and field situations is important. For example, Lee provided small coffee gift cards to one group while she did not to the other based on previous practices of other researchers. That is, for a particular group, it has become a custom for interviewers to pay interviewees. Sometimes, you may want to reimburse your subject's interview costs such as travel expenses and provide beverages and snacks during the conduct of research, as Kreft did when conducting focus groups in Colombia. To express your gratitude to your respondents, you can prepare small gifts such as your university memorabilia (e.g., notebooks and pens). Since past practices about payments can affect your interactions and interviews with a target group, you want to seek advice from your colleagues and other researchers who had experiences interacting with the target group. If you cannot find researchers who have this knowledge, you can search for published works on the target population to find if the authors share their interview experiences. You may also consider contacting the authors for advice before your interviews.

Researching Strategically

Distinguishing between things that can only be done in person at a particular site and things that can be accomplished later at home is vital. Prioritize the former over the latter. Lee's fieldwork experience serves as a good example. She studied a conservative protest movement called the Taegeukgi Rally in South Korea. She planned to conduct interviews with the rally participants to examine their motivations for participating. But she only had one month in South Korea. So, she focused on things that could only be done in the field: she went to the rally sites, she observed how protests proceeded, which tactics and chants were used, and she met participants and had some casual conversations with them. Then, she used the contacts she made while attending the rallies to create a social network to solicit interviews from ordinary protesters, her target population. She was able to recruit twenty-five interviewees through good rapport with the people she met. The actual interviews proceeded via phone after she returned to the United States. In a nutshell, we advise you not to be obsessed with finishing interviews in the field. Sometimes, it is more beneficial to use your time in the field to build relationships and networks.

Working With Assistants and Translators

A final consideration on logistics is working with research assistants or translators; it affects how you can carry out interviews, focus groups, etc. To what extent constant back-and-forth translation is necessary or advisable depends on the researcher's skills in the interview language and considerations about time and efficiency. For example, Kreft soon realized that she was generally able to follow along quite well during her interviews in Colombia. In order to avoid precious time being lost to translation, she had her research assistant follow the interview guide Kreft had developed, and interjected follow-up questions in Spanish or English (then to be translated) as they arose.

Irgil's and Zvobgo's interviews went a little differently. Irgil's Syrian refugee interviewees in Turkey were native Arabic speakers, and Zvobgo's interviewees in Guatemala were native Spanish speakers. Both Irgil and Zvobgo worked with research assistants. In Irgil's case, her assistant was a Syrian man, who was outside of the area. Meanwhile, Zvobgo's assistant was an undergraduate from her home institution with a Spanish language background. Irgil and Zvobgo began preparing their assistants a couple of months before entering the field, over Skype for Irgil and in-person for Zvobgo. They offered their assistants readings and other resources to provide them with the necessary background to work well. Both Irgil and Zvobgo's research assistants joined them in the interviews and actually did most of the speaking, introducing the principal investigator, explaining the research, and then asking the questions. In Zvobgo's case, interviewee responses were relayed via a professional interpreter whom she had also hired. After every interview, Irgil and Zvobgo and their respective assistants discussed the answers of the interviewees, potential improvements in phrasing, and elaborated on their hand-written interview notes. As a backup, Zvobgo, with the consent of her respondents, had accompanying audio recordings.

Researchers may carry out fieldwork in a country that is considerably less safe than what they are used to, a setting affected by conflict violence or high crime rates, for instance. Feelings of insecurity can be compounded by linguistic barriers, cultural particularities, and being far away from friends and family. Insecurity is also often gendered, differentially affecting women and raising the specter of unwanted sexual advances, street harassment, or even sexual assault ( Gifford and Hall-Clifford 2008 ; Mügge 2013 ). In a recent survey of Political Science graduate students in the United States, about half of those who had done fieldwork internationally reported having encountered safety issues in the field, (54 percent female, 47 percent male), and only 21 percent agreed that their Ph.D. programs had prepared them to carry out their fieldwork safely ( Schwartz and Cronin-Furman 2020 , 8–9).

Preventative measures scholars may adopt in an unsafe context may involve, at their most fundamental, adjustments to everyday routines and habits, restricting one's movements temporally and spatially. Reliance on gatekeepers may also necessitate adopting new strategies, such as a less vehement and cold rejection of unwanted sexual advances than one ordinarily would exhibit, as Mügge (2013) illustratively discusses. At the same time, a competitive academic job market, imperatives to collect novel and useful data, and harmful discourses surrounding dangerous fieldwork also, problematically, shape incentives for junior researchers to relax their own standards of what constitutes acceptable risk ( Gallien 2021 ).

Others have carefully collected a range of safety precautions that field researchers in fragile or conflict-affected settings may take before and during fieldwork ( Hilhorst et al. 2016 ). Therefore, we are more concise in our discussion of recommendations, focusing on the specific situations of graduate students. Apart from ensuring that supervisors and university administrators have the researcher's contact information in the field (and possibly also that of a local contact person), researchers can register with their country's embassy or foreign office and any crisis monitoring and prevention systems it has in place. That way, they will be informed of any possible unfolding emergencies and the authorities have a record of them being in the country.

It may also be advisable to set up more individualized safety protocols with one or two trusted individuals, such as friends, supervisors, or colleagues at home or in the fieldwork setting itself. The latter option makes sense in particular if one has an official affiliation with a local institution for the duration of the fieldwork, which is often advisable. Still, we would also recommend establishing relationships with local researchers in the absence of a formal affiliation. To keep others informed of her whereabouts, Kreft, for instance, made arrangements with her supervisors to be in touch via email at regular intervals to report on progress and wellbeing. This kept her supervisors in the loop, while an interruption in communication would have alerted them early if something were wrong. In addition, she announced planned trips to other parts of the country and granted her supervisors and a colleague at her home institution emergency reading access to her digital calendar. To most of her interviews, she was moreover accompanied by her local research assistant/translator. If the nature of the research, ethical considerations, and the safety situation allow, it might also be possible to bring a local friend along to interviews as an “assistant,” purely for safety reasons. This option needs to be carefully considered already in the planning stage and should, particularly in settings of fragility or if carrying out research on politically exposed individuals, be noted in any ethical and institutional review processes where these are required. Adequate compensation for such an assistant should be ensured. It may also be advisable to put in place an emergency plan, that is, choose emergency contacts back home and “in the field,” know whom to contact if something happens, and know how to get to the nearest hospital or clinic.

We would be remiss if we did not mention that, when in an unfamiliar context, one's safety radar may be misguided, so it is essential to listen to people who know the context. For example, locals can give advice on which means of transport are safe and which are not, a question that is of the utmost importance when traveling to appointments. For example, Kreft was warned that in Colombia regular taxis are often unsafe, especially if waved down in the streets, and that to get to her interviews safely, she should rely on a ride-share service. In one instance, a Colombian friend suggested that when there was no alternative to a regular taxi, Kreft should book through the app and share the order details, including the taxi registration number or license plate, with a friend. Likewise, sharing one's cell phone location with a trusted friend while traveling or when one feels unsafe may be a viable option. Finally, it is prudent to heed the safety recommendations and travel advisories provided by state authorities and embassies to determine when and where it is safe to travel. Especially if researchers have a responsibility not only for themselves but also for research assistants and research participants, safety must be a top priority.

This does not mean that a researcher should be careless in a context they know either. Of course, conducting fieldwork in a context that is known to the researcher offers many advantages. However, one should be prepared to encounter unwanted events too. For instance, Irgil has conducted fieldwork in her country of origin in a city she knows very well. Therefore, access to the site, moving around the site, and blending in has not been a problem; she also has the advantage of speaking the native language. Yet, she took notes of the streets she walked in, as she often returned from the field site after dark and thought she might get confused after a tiring day. She also established a closer relationship with two or three store owners in different parts of the field site if she needed something urgent, like running out of battery. Above all, one should always be aware of one's surroundings and use common sense. If something feels unsafe, chances are it is.

Fieldwork may negatively affect the researcher's mental health and mental wellbeing regardless of where one's “field” is, whether related to concerns about crime and insecurity, linguistic barriers, social isolation, or the practicalities of identifying, contacting and interviewing research participants. Coping with these different sources of stress can be both mentally and physically exhausting. Then there are the things you may hear, see and learn during the research itself, such as gruesome accounts of violence and suffering conveyed in interviews or archival documents one peruses. Kreft and Zvobgo have spoken with women victims of conflict-related sexual violence, who sometimes displayed strong emotions of pain and anger during the interviews. Likewise, Irgil and Willis have spoken with members of other vulnerable populations such as refugees and former sex workers ( Willis 2020 ).

Prior accounts ( Wood 2006 ; Loyle and Simoni 2017 ; Skjelsbæk 2018 ; Hummel and El Kurd 2020 ; Williamson et al. 2020 ; Schulz and Kreft 2021 ) show that it is natural for sensitive research and fieldwork challenges to affect or even (vicariously) traumatize the researcher. By removing researchers from their regular routines and support networks, fieldwork may also exacerbate existing mental health conditions ( Hummel and El Kurd 2020 ). Nonetheless, mental wellbeing is rarely incorporated into fieldwork courses and guidelines, where these exist at all. But even if you know to anticipate some sort of reaction, you rarely know what that reaction will be until you experience it. When researching sensitive or difficult topics, for example, reactions can include sadness, frustration, anger, fear, helplessness, and flashbacks to personal experiences of violence ( Williamson et al. 2020 ). For example, Kreft responded with episodic feelings of depression and both mental and physical exhaustion. But curiously, these reactions emerged most strongly after she had returned from fieldwork and in particular as she spent extended periods analyzing her interview data, reliving some of the more emotional scenes during the interviews and being confronted with accounts of (sexual) violence against women in a concentrated fashion. This is a crucial reminder that fieldwork does not end when one returns home; the after-effects may linger. Likewise, Zvobgo was physically and mentally drained upon her return from the field. Both Kreft and Zvobgo were unable to concentrate for long periods of time and experienced lower-than-normal levels of productivity for weeks afterward, patterns that formal and informal conversations with other scholars confirm to be common ( Schulz and Kreft 2021 ). Furthermore, the boundaries between “field” and “home” are blurred when conducting remote fieldwork ( Howlett 2021 , 11).

Nor are these adverse reactions limited to cases where the researcher has carried out the interviews themselves. Accounts of violence, pain, and suffering transported in reports, secondary literature, or other sources can evoke similar emotional stress, as Kreft experienced when engaging in a concentrated fashion with additional accounts of conflict-related sexual violence in Colombia and with the feminist literature on sexual and gender-based violence in the comfort of her Swedish office. This could also be applicable to Irgil's fieldwork as she interviewed refugees whose traumas have come out during the interviews or recall specific events triggered by the questions. Likewise, Lee has reviewed primary and secondary materials on North Korean defectors in the national archives and these materials contain violent, intense, emotional narratives.

Fortunately, there are several strategies to cope with and manage such adverse consequences. In a candid and insightful piece, other researchers have discussed the usefulness of distractions, sharing with colleagues, counseling, exercise, and, probably less advisable in the long term, comfort eating and drinking ( Williamson et al. 2020 ; see also Loyle and Simoni 2017 ; Hummel and El Kurd 2020 ). Our experiences largely tally with their observations. In this section, we explore some of these in more detail.

First, in the face of adverse consequences on your mental wellbeing, whether in the field or after your return, it is essential to be patient and generous with yourself. Negative effects on the researcher's mental wellbeing can hit in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Even if you think that certain reactions are disproportionate or unwarranted at that specific moment, they may simply have been building up over a long time. They are legitimate. Second, the importance of taking breaks and finding distractions, whether that is exercise, socializing with friends, reading a good book, or watching a new series, cannot be overstated. It is easy to fall into a mode of thinking that you constantly have to be productive while you are “in the field,” to maximize your time. But as with all other areas in life, balance is key and rest is necessary. Taking your mind off your research and the research questions you puzzle over is also a good way to more fully soak up and appreciate the context in which you find yourself, in the case of in-person fieldwork, and about which you ultimately write.

Third, we cannot stress enough the importance of investing in social relations. Before going on fieldwork, researchers may want to consult others who have done it before them. Try to find (junior) scholars who have done fieldwork on similar kinds of topics or in the same country or countries you are planning to visit. Utilizing colleagues’ contacts and forging connections using social media are valuable strategies to expand your networks (in fact, this very paper is the result of a social media conversation and several of the authors have never met in person). Having been in the same situation before, most field researchers are, in our experience, generous with their time and advice. Before embarking on her first trip to Colombia, Kreft contacted other researchers in her immediate and extended network and received useful advice on questions such as how to move around Bogotá, whom to speak to, and how to find a research assistant. After completing her fieldwork, she has passed on her experiences to others who contacted her before their first fieldwork trip. Informal networks are, in the absence of more formalized fieldwork preparation, your best friend.

In the field, seeking the company of locals and of other researchers who are also doing fieldwork alleviates anxiety and makes fieldwork more enjoyable. Exchanging experiences, advice and potential interviewee contacts with peers can be extremely beneficial and make the many challenges inherent in fieldwork (on difficult topics) seem more manageable. While researchers conducting remote fieldwork may be physically isolated from other researchers, even connecting with others doing remote fieldwork may be comforting. And even when there are no precise solutions to be found, it is heartening or even cathartic to meet others who are in the same boat and with whom you can talk through your experiences. When Kreft shared some of her fieldwork-related struggles with another researcher she had just met in Bogotá and realized that they were encountering very similar challenges, it was like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. Similarly, peer support can help with readjustment after the fieldwork trip, even if it serves only to reassure you that a post-fieldwork dip in productivity and mental wellbeing is entirely natural. Bear in mind that certain challenges are part of the fieldwork experience and that they do not result from inadequacy on the part of the researcher.

Finally, we would like to stress a point made by Inger Skjelsbæk (2018 , 509) and which has not received sufficient attention: as a discipline, we need to take the question of researcher mental wellbeing more seriously—not only in graduate education, fieldwork preparation, and at conferences, but also in reflecting on how it affects the research process itself: “When strong emotions arise, through reading about, coding, or talking to people who have been impacted by [conflict-related sexual violence] (as victims or perpetrators), it may create a feeling of being unprofessional, nonscientific, and too subjective.”

We contend that this is a challenge not only for research on sensitive issues but also for fieldwork more generally. To what extent is it possible, and desirable, to uphold the image of the objective researcher during fieldwork, when we are at our foundation human beings? And going even further, how do the (anticipated) effects of our research on our wellbeing, and the safety precautions we take ( Gifford and Hall-Clifford 2008 ), affect the kinds of questions we ask, the kinds of places we visit and with whom we speak? How do they affect the methods we use and how we interpret our findings? An honest discussion of affective responses to our research in methods sections seems utopian, as emotionality in the research process continues to be silenced and relegated to the personal, often in gendered ways, which in turn is considered unconnected to the objective and scientific research process ( Jamar and Chappuis 2016 ). But as Gifford and Hall-Clifford (2008 , 26) aptly put it: “Graduate education should acknowledge the reality that fieldwork is scholarly but also intimately personal,” and we contend that the two shape each other. Therefore, we encourage political science as a discipline to reflect on researcher wellbeing and affective responses to fieldwork more carefully, and we see the need for methods courses that embrace a more holistic notion of the subjectivity of the researcher.

Interacting with people in the field is one of the most challenging yet rewarding parts of the work that we do, especially in comparison to impersonal, often tedious wrangling and analysis of quantitative data. Field researchers often make personal connections with their interviewees. Consequently, maintaining boundaries can be a bit tricky. Here, we recommend being honest with everyone with whom you interact without overstating the abilities of a researcher. This appears as a challenge in the field, particularly when you empathize with people and when they share profound parts of their lives with you for your research in addition to being “human subjects” ( Fujii 2012 ). For instance, when Irgil interviewed native citizens about the changes in their neighborhood following the arrival of Syrian refugees, many interviewees questioned what she would offer them in return for their participation. Irgil responded that her primary contribution would be her published work. She also noted, however, that academic papers can take a year, sometimes longer, to go through the peer-reviewed process and, once published, many studies have a limited audience. The Syrian refugees posed similar questions. Irgil responded not only with honesty but also, given this population's vulnerable status, she provided them contact information for NGOs with which they could connect if they needed help or answers to specific questions.

For her part, Zvobgo was very upfront with her interviewees about her role as a researcher: she recognized that she is not someone who is on the frontlines of the fight for human rights and transitional justice like they are. All she could/can do is use her platform to amplify their stories, bringing attention to their vital work through her future peer-reviewed publications. She also committed to sending them copies of the work, as electronic journal articles are often inaccessible due to paywalls and university press books are very expensive, especially for nonprofits. Interviewees were very receptive; some were even moved by the degree of self-awareness and the commitment to do right by them. In some cases, this prompted them to share even more, because they knew that the researcher was really there to listen and learn. This is something that junior scholars, and all scholars really, should always remember. We enter the field to be taught. Likewise, Kreft circulated among her interviewees Spanish-language versions of an academic article and a policy brief based on the fieldwork she had carried out in Colombia.

As researchers from the Global North, we recognize a possible power differential between us and our research subjects, and certainly an imbalance in power between the countries where we have been trained and some of the countries where we have done and continue to do field research, particularly in politically dynamic contexts ( Knott 2019 ). This is why we are so concerned with being open and transparent with everyone with whom we come into contact in the field and why we are committed to giving back to those who so generously lend us their time and knowledge. Knott (2019 , 148) summarizes this as “Reflexive openness is a form of transparency that is methodologically and ethically superior to providing access to data in its raw form, at least for qualitative data.”

We also recognize that academics, including in the social sciences and especially those hailing from countries in the Global North, have a long and troubled history of exploiting their power over others for the sake of their research—including failing to be upfront about their research goals, misrepresenting the on-the-ground realities of their field research sites (including remote fieldwork), and publishing essentializing, paternalistic, and damaging views and analyses of the people there. No one should build their career on the backs of others, least of all in a field concerned with the possession and exercise of power. Thus, it is highly crucial to acknowledge the power hierarchies between the researcher and the interviewees, and to reflect on them both in the field and beyond the field upon return.

A major challenge to conducting fieldwork is when researchers’ carefully planned designs do not go as planned due to unforeseen events outside of our control, such as pandemics, natural disasters, deteriorating security situations in the field, or even the researcher falling ill. As the Covid-19 pandemic has made painfully clear, researchers may face situations where in-person research is simply not possible. In some cases, researchers may be barred entry to their fieldwork site; in others, the ethical implications of entering the field greatly outweigh the importance of fieldwork. Such barriers to conducting in-person research require us to reconsider conventional notions of what constitutes fieldwork. Researchers may need to shift their data collection methods, for example, conducting interviews remotely instead of in person. Even while researchers are in the field, they may still need to carry out part of their interviews or surveys virtually or by phone. For example, Kreft (2020) carried out a small number of interviews remotely while she was based in Bogotá, because some of the women's civil society activists with whom she intended to speak were based in parts of the country that were difficult and/or dangerous to access.

Remote field research, which we define as the collection of data over the internet or over the phone where in-person fieldwork is not possible due to security, health or other risks, comes with its own sets of challenges. For one, there may be certain populations that researchers cannot reach remotely due to a lack of internet connectivity or technology such as cellphones and computers. In such instances, there will be a sampling bias toward individuals and groups that do have these resources, a point worth noting when scholars interpret their research findings. In the case of virtual research, the risk of online surveillance, hacking, or wiretapping may also produce reluctance on the part of interviewees to discuss sensitive issues that may compromise their safety. Researchers need to carefully consider how the use of digital technology may increase the risk to research participants and what changes to the research design and any interview guides this necessitates. In general, it is imperative that researchers reflect on how they can ethically use digital technology in their fieldwork ( Van Baalen 2018 ). Remote interviews may also be challenging to arrange for researchers who have not made connections in person with people in their community of interest.

Some of the serendipitous happenings we discussed earlier may also be less likely and snowball sampling more difficult. For example, in phone or virtual interviews, it is harder to build good rapport and trust with interviewees as compared to face-to-face interviews. Accordingly, researchers should be more careful in communicating with interviewees and creating a comfortable interview environment. Especially when dealing with sensitive topics, researchers may have to make several phone calls and sometimes have to open themselves to establishing trust with interviewees. Also, researchers must be careful in protecting interviewees in phone or virtual interviews when they deal with sensitive topics of countries interviewees reside in.

The inability to physically visit one's community of interest may also encourage scholars to critically reflect on how much time in the field is essential to completing their research and to consider creative, alternative means for accessing information to complete their projects. While data collection techniques such as face-to-face interviews and archival work in the field may be ideal in normal times, there exist other data sources that can provide comparably useful information. For example, in her research on the role of framing in the United States base politics, Willis found that social media accounts and websites yielded information useful to her project. Many archives across the world have also been digitized. Researchers may also consider crowdsourcing data from the field among their networks, as fellow academics tend to collect much more data in the field than they ever use in their published works. They may also elect to hire someone, perhaps a graduate student, in a city or a country where they cannot travel and have the individual access, scan, and send archival materials. This final suggestion may prove generally useful to researchers with limited time and financial resources.

Remote qualitative data collection techniques, while they will likely never be “the gold-standard,” also pose several advantages. These techniques may help researchers avoid some of the issues mentioned previously. Remote interviews, for example, are less time-consuming in terms of travel to the interview site ( Archibald et al. 2019 ). The implication is that researchers may have less fatigue from conducting interviews and/or may be able to conduct more interviews. For example, while Willis had little energy to do anything else after an in-person interview (or two) in a given day, she had much more energy after completing remote interviews. Second, remote fieldwork also helps researchers avoid potentially dangerous situations in the field mentioned previously. Lastly, remote fieldwork generally presents fewer financial barriers than in-person research ( Archibald et al. 2019 ). In that sense, considering remote qualitative data collection, a type of “fieldwork” may make fieldwork more accessible to a greater number of scholars.

Many of the substantive, methodological and practical challenges that arise during fieldwork can be anticipated. Proper preparation can help you hit the ground running once you enter your fieldwork destination, whether in-person or virtually. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as being perfectly prepared for the field. Some things will simply be beyond your control, and especially as a newcomer to field research, and you should be prepared for things to not go as planned. New questions will arise, interview participants may cancel appointments, and you might not get the answers you expected. Be ready to make adjustments to research plans, interview guides, or questionnaires. And, be mindful of your affective reactions to the overall fieldwork situation and be gentle with yourself.

We recommend approaching fieldwork as a learning experience as much as, or perhaps even more than, a data collection effort. This also applies to your research topic. While it is prudent always to exercise a healthy amount of skepticism about what people tell you and why, the participants in your research will likely have unique perspectives and knowledge that will challenge yours. Be an attentive listener and remember that they are experts of their own experiences.

We encourage more institutions to offer courses that cover field research preparation and planning, practical advice on safety and wellbeing, and discussion of ethics. Specifically, we align with Schwartz and Cronin-Furman's (2020 , 3) contention “that treating fieldwork preparation as the methodology will improve individual scholars’ experiences and research.” In this article, we outline a set of issue areas in which we think formal preparation is necessary, but we note that our discussion is by no means exhaustive. Formal fieldwork preparation should also extend beyond what we have covered in this article, such as issues of data security and preparing for nonqualitative fieldwork methods. We also note that field research is one area that has yet to be comprehensively addressed in conversations on diversity and equity in the political science discipline and the broader academic profession. In a recent article, Brielle Harbin (2021) begins to fill this gap by sharing her experiences conducting in-person election surveys as a Black woman in a conservative and predominantly white region of the United States and the challenges that she encountered. Beyond race and gender, citizenship, immigration status, one's Ph.D. institution and distance to the field also affect who is able to do what type of field research, where, and for how long. Future research should explore these and related questions in greater detail because limits on who is able to conduct field research constrict the sociological imagination of our field.

While Emmons and Moravcsik (2020) focus on leading Political Science Ph.D. programs in the United States, these trends likely obtain, both in lower ranked institutions in the broader United States as well as in graduate education throughout North America and Europe.

As all the authors have carried out qualitative fieldwork, this is the primary focus of this guide. This does not, however, mean that we exclude quantitative or experimental data collection from our definition of fieldwork.

There is great variation in graduate students’ financial situations, even in the Global North. For example, while higher education is tax-funded in most countries in Europe and Ph.D. students in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland receive a comparatively generous full-time salary, healthcare and contributions to pension schemes, Ph.D. programs in other contexts like the United States and the United Kingdom have (high) enrollment fees and rely on scholarships, stipends, or departmental duties like teaching to (partially) offset these, while again others, such as Germany, are commonly financed by part-time (50 percent) employment at the university with tasks substantively unrelated to the dissertation. These different preconditions leave many Ph.D. students struggling financially and even incurring debt, while others are in a more comfortable financial position. Likewise, Ph.D. programs around the globe differ in structure, such as required coursework, duration and supervision relationships. Naturally, all of these factors have a bearing on the extent to which fieldwork is feasible. We acknowledge unequal preconditions across institutions and contexts, and trust that those Ph.D. students interested in pursuing fieldwork are best able to assess the structural and institutional context in which they operate and what this implies for how, when, and how long to carry out fieldwork.

In our experience, this is not only the general cycle for graduate students in North America, but also in Europe and likely elsewhere.

For helpful advice and feedback on earlier drafts, we wish to thank the editors and reviewers at International Studies Review , and Cassandra Emmons. We are also grateful to our interlocuters in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Kenya, Norway, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, without whom this reflection on fieldwork would not have been possible. All authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

This material is based upon work supported by the Forskraftstiftelsen Theodor Adelswärds Minne, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation(KAW 2013.0178), National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program(DGE-1418060), Southeast Asia Research Group (Pre-Dissertation Fellowship), University at Albany (Initiatives for Women and the Benevolent Association), University of Missouri (John D. Bies International Travel Award Program and Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy), University of Southern California (Provost Fellowship in the Social Sciences), Vetenskapsrådet(Diarienummer 2019-06298), Wilhelm och Martina Lundgrens Vetenskapsfond(2016-1102; 2018-2272), and William & Mary (Global Research Institute Pre-doctoral Fellowship).

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10.2 Pros and Cons of Field Research

Learning objectives.

• Identify and explain the strengths of field research.
• Identify and explain the weaknesses of field research.

Field research has many benefits, as well as a set of drawbacks. We’ll explore both here.

Strengths of Field Research

Field research allows researchers to gain firsthand experience and knowledge about the people, events, and processes that they study. No other method offers quite the same kind of closeup lens on everyday life. This close-up on everyday life means that field researchers can obtain very detailed data about people and processes, perhaps more detailed than they can obtain using any other method.

Field research is an excellent method for understanding the role of social context in shaping people’s lives and experiences. It enables a greater understanding of the intricacies and complexities of daily life. Field research may also uncover elements of people’s experiences or of group interactions of which we were not previously aware. This in particular is a unique strength of field research. With other methods, such as interviews and surveys, we certainly can’t expect a respondent to answer a question to which they do not know the answer or to provide us with information of which they are not aware. And because field research typically occurs over an extended period of time, social facts that may not even be immediately revealed to a researcher but that become discovered over time can be uncovered during the course of a field research project.

In sum, the major benefits of field research are the following:

• It yields very detailed data.
• It emphasizes the role and relevance of social context.
• It can uncover social facts that may not be immediately obvious or of which research participants may be unaware.

Weaknesses of Field Research

Earlier I described the fact that field researchers are able to collect very detailed data as a benefit of this method. This benefit, however, does come at a cost. Because a field researcher’s focus is so detailed, it is by necessity also somewhat narrow. Field researchers simply are not able to gather data from as many individuals as, say, a survey researcher can reach. Indeed, field researchers generally sacrifice breadth in exchange for depth. Related to this point is the fact that field research is extremely time intensive.

Field research can also be emotionally taxing. In Chapter 9 "Interviews: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches" , I assert that interview research requires, to a certain extent, the development of a relationship between a researcher and her participants. But if interviews and field research both require relationship development, you might say that interviews are more like casual dating while field research is more like a full-blown, committed marriage.

The relationships you develop as a field researcher are sustained over a much longer period than the hour or two it might take you to conduct an interview. Not only do the relationships last longer, but they are also more intimate. A number of field researchers have documented the complexities of relationships with research participants (Arditti, Joest, Lambert-Shute, & Walker, 2010; Keinman & Copp, 1993; MacLeod, 1995). MacLeod, J. (1995). On the making of ain’t no makin’ it. In J. MacLeod (Ed.), Ain’t no makin’ it: Aspirations and attainment in a low-income neighborhood (pp. 270–302). Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Arditti, J. A., Joest, K. A., Lambert-Shute, J., & Walker, L. (2010). The role of emotions in fieldwork: A self-study of family research in a corrections setting. The Qualitative Report, 15, 1387–1414; Keinman, S., & Copp, M. A. (1993). Emotions and fieldwork . Newbury Park, CA: Sage. On the plus side, these relationships can be very rewarding (and yield the rich, detailed data noted as a strength in the preceding discussion). But, as in any relationship, field researchers experience not just the highs but also the lows of daily life and interactions. And participating in day-to-day life with one’s research subjects can result in some tricky ethical quandaries (see Chapter 3 "Research Ethics" for a discussion of some of these quandaries). It can also be a challenge if your aim is to observe as “objectively” as possible.

Finally, documentation can be challenging for field researchers. Where survey researchers have the questionnaires participants complete and interviewers have recordings, field researchers generally have only themselves to rely on for documenting what they observe. This challenge becomes immediately apparent upon entering the field. It may not be possible to take field notes as you observe, nor will you necessarily know which details to document or which will become the most important details to have noted. And when you take notes after some observation, you may not recall everything exactly as you saw it when you were there.

In sum, the weaknesses of field research include the following:

• It may lack breadth; gathering very detailed information means being unable to gather data from a very large number of people or groups.
• It may be emotionally taxing.
• Documenting observations may be more challenging than with other methods.

Key Takeaways

• Strengths of field research include the fact that it yields very detailed data, it is designed to pay heed to social context, and it can uncover social facts that are not immediately obvious.
• Weaknesses of field research include that researchers may have to sacrifice breadth for depth, the possibility that the research will be emotionally taxing, and the fact that documenting observations can be challenging.
• In your opinion, what is the most important strength of field research? What do you view as its greatest weakness? Explain your position.
• Find an article reporting results from field research. You can do this by using the Sociological Abstracts database, which was introduced in Chapter 4 "Beginning a Research Project" . How do the authors describe the strengths and weaknesses of their study? Are any of the strengths or weaknesses described in this section mentioned in the article? Are there additional strengths or weaknesses not mentioned in this section?

Field experiments, explained

Editor’s note: This is part of a series called “The Day Tomorrow Began,” which explores the history of breakthroughs at UChicago.  Learn more here.

A field experiment is a research method that uses some controlled elements of traditional lab experiments, but takes place in natural, real-world settings. This type of experiment can help scientists explore questions like: Why do people vote the way they do? Why do schools fail? Why are certain people hired less often or paid less money?

University of Chicago economists were early pioneers in the modern use of field experiments and conducted innovative research that impacts our everyday lives—from policymaking to marketing to farming and agriculture.  

Jump to a section:

What is a field experiment, why do a field experiment, what are examples of field experiments, when did field experiments become popular in modern economics, what are criticisms of field experiments.

Field experiments bridge the highly controlled lab environment and the messy real world. Social scientists have taken inspiration from traditional medical or physical science lab experiments. In a typical drug trial, for instance, participants are randomly assigned into two groups. The control group gets the placebo—a pill that has no effect. The treatment group will receive the new pill. The scientist can then compare the outcomes for each group.

A field experiment works similarly, just in the setting of real life.

It can be difficult to understand why a person chooses to buy one product over another or how effective a policy is when dozens of variables affect the choices we make each day. “That type of thinking, for centuries, caused economists to believe you can't do field experimentation in economics because the market is really messy,” said Prof. John List, a UChicago economist who has used field experiments to study everything from how people use  Uber and  Lyft to  how to close the achievement gap in Chicago-area schools . “There are a lot of things that are simultaneously moving.”

The key to cleaning up the mess is randomization —or assigning participants randomly to either the control group or the treatment group. “The beauty of randomization is that each group has the same amount of bad stuff, or noise or dirt,” List said. “That gets differenced out if you have large enough samples.”

Though lab experiments are still common in the social sciences, field experiments are now often used by psychologists, sociologists and political scientists. They’ve also become an essential tool in the economist’s toolbox.  

Some issues are too big and too complex to study in a lab or on paper—that’s where field experiments come in.

In a laboratory setting, a researcher wants to control as many variables as possible. These experiments are excellent for testing new medications or measuring brain functions, but they aren’t always great for answering complex questions about attitudes or behavior.

Labs are highly artificial with relatively small sample sizes—it’s difficult to know if results will still apply in the real world. Also, people are aware they are being observed in a lab, which can alter their behavior. This phenomenon, sometimes called the Hawthorne effect, can affect results.

Traditional economics often uses theories or existing data to analyze problems. But, when a researcher wants to study if a policy will be effective or not, field experiments are a useful way to look at how results may play out in real life.

In 2019, UChicago economist Michael Kremer (then at Harvard) was awarded the Nobel Prize alongside Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT for their groundbreaking work using field experiments to help reduce poverty . In the 1990s and 2000s, Kremer conducted several randomized controlled trials in Kenyan schools testing potential interventions to improve student performance. 

In the 1990s, Kremer worked alongside an NGO to figure out if buying students new textbooks made a difference in academic performance. Half the schools got new textbooks; the other half didn’t. The results were unexpected—textbooks had no impact.

“Things we think are common sense, sometimes they turn out to be right, sometimes they turn out to be wrong,” said Kremer on an episode of  the Big Brains podcast. “And things that we thought would have minimal impact or no impact turn out to have a big impact.”

In the early 2000s, Kremer returned to Kenya to study a school-based deworming program. He and a colleague found that providing deworming pills to all students reduced absenteeism by more than 25%. After the study, the program was scaled nationwide by the Kenyan government. From there it was picked up by multiple Indian states—and then by the Indian national government.

“Experiments are a way to get at causal impact, but they’re also much more than that,” Kremer said in  his Nobel Prize lecture . “They give the researcher a richer sense of context, promote broader collaboration and address specific practical problems.”    

Among many other things, field experiments can be used to:

Study bias and discrimination

A 2004 study published by UChicago economists Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan (then at MIT) examined racial discrimination in the labor market. They sent over 5,000 resumes to real job ads in Chicago and Boston. The resumes were exactly the same in all ways but one—the name at the top. Half the resumes bore white-sounding names like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker. The other half sported African American names like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. The study found that applications with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to receive a callback.

Examine voting behavior

Political scientist Harold Gosnell , PhD 1922, pioneered the use of field experiments to examine voting behavior while at UChicago in the 1920s and ‘30s. In his study “Getting out the vote,” Gosnell sorted 6,000 Chicagoans across 12 districts into groups. One group received voter registration info for the 1924 presidential election and the control group did not. Voter registration jumped substantially among those who received the informational notices. Not only did the study prove that get-out-the-vote mailings could have a substantial effect on voter turnout, but also that field experiments were an effective tool in political science.

Test ways to reduce crime and shape public policy

Researchers at UChicago’s  Crime Lab use field experiments to gather data on crime as well as policies and programs meant to reduce it. For example, Crime Lab director and economist Jens Ludwig co-authored a  2015 study on the effectiveness of the school mentoring program  Becoming a Man . Developed by the non-profit Youth Guidance, Becoming a Man focuses on guiding male students between 7th and 12th grade to help boost school engagement and reduce arrests. In two field experiments, the Crime Lab found that while students participated in the program, total arrests were reduced by 28–35%, violent-crime arrests went down by 45–50% and graduation rates increased by 12–19%.

The earliest field experiments took place—literally—in fields. Starting in the 1800s, European farmers began experimenting with fertilizers to see how they affected crop yields. In the 1920s, two statisticians, Jerzy Neyman and Ronald Fisher, were tasked with assisting with these agricultural experiments. They are credited with identifying randomization as a key element of the method—making sure each plot had the same chance of being treated as the next.

The earliest large-scale field experiments in the U.S. took place in the late 1960s to help evaluate various government programs. Typically, these experiments were used to test minor changes to things like electricity pricing or unemployment programs.

Though field experiments were used in some capacity throughout the 20th century, this method didn’t truly gain popularity in economics until the 2000s. Kremer and List were early pioneers and first began experimenting with the method in the 1990s.

In 2004, List co-authored  a seminal paper defining field experiments and arguing for the importance of the method. In 2008,  he and UChicago economist Steven Levitt published another study tracing the history of field experiments and their impact on economics.

In the past few decades, the use of field experiments has exploded. Today, economists often work alongside NGOs or nonprofit organizations to study the efficacy of programs or policies. They also partner with companies to test products and understand how people use services.  

There are several  ethical discussions happening among scholars as field experiments grow in popularity. Chief among them is the issue of informed consent. All studies that involve human test subjects must be approved by an institutional review board (IRB) to ensure that people are protected.

However, participants in field experiments often don’t know they are in an experiment. While an experiment may be given the stamp of approval in the research community, some argue that taking away peoples’ ability to opt out is inherently unethical. Others advocate for stricter review processes as field experiments continue to evolve.

According to List, another major issue in field experiments is the issue of scale . Many experiments only test small groups—say, dozens to hundreds of people. This may mean the results are not applicable to broader situations. For example, if a scientist runs an experiment at one school and finds their method works there, does that mean it will also work for an entire city? Or an entire country?

List believes that in addition to testing option A and option B, researchers need a third option that accounts for the limitations that come with a larger scale. “Option C is what I call critical scale features. I want you to bring in all of the warts, all of the constraints, whether they're regulatory constraints, or constraints by law,” List said. “Option C is like your reality test, or what I call policy-based evidence.”

This problem isn’t unique to field experiments, but List believes tackling the issue of scale is the next major frontier for a new generation of economists.

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• Marketing Research

Field Research - Definition and its important sources

Field Research deals with creation and collection of actual and authentic information by field of operation in any organization.

The process involves determining what precise data is necessary and from where this information needs to be obtained. After determining this information the data is actually gathered. Thus this research technique is treated as the primary research approach because the determined data is specific to the purpose of gathering that data.

Field research is generally performed in person, telephonic or by electronic media like teleconferencing, web-meetings and emails .

Many of the big organizations involve outside vendors or companies to perform this task which they usually refer as outsourcing, but small organizations or new companies do this themselves by involving their internal resources.

The outsourcing depends on the type and amount of information to be gathered in the research. If the required data is less and limited to some small and specific modules then big organization also prefer to do this task in-house.

Field research is expensive and involves more and experienced resources as compared to desk research which is not as accurate as field research.

Being expensive it is required to perform the research in efficient manner and obtain or determine only specific information and answer only particular questions as irrelevant data is a waste and will be of no use for further research processes.

The following are the importance sources for field research:

There are many other less prominent sources like interviews, trade shows, and promotional programs etc. and much of the relevant information could be gathered from these sources as well. All the information gathered from the above sources is then manipulated and segmented.

As in field research most of the information is relevant as it is actually gathered for a particular purpose, so regular round of work around on the data is not required.

After validating the information it is then fetched into the CRM system and is converted into intelligent data which can be accessed on real time.

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• Market Research and CRM
• Market Research Process
• Desk Research
• Data Analysis and Compilation
• Report Preparation

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Authorship/Referencing - About the Author(s)

The article is Written and Reviewed by Management Study Guide Content Team . MSG Content Team comprises experienced Faculty Member, Professionals and Subject Matter Experts. We are a ISO 2001:2015 Certified Education Provider . To Know more, click on About Us . The use of this material is free for learning and education purpose. Please reference authorship of content used, including link(s) to ManagementStudyGuide.com and the content page url.

• Marketing Research - Introduction
• Limitations of Marketing Research
• Marketing Research: Step by Step Execution
• Data Collection in Marketing Research
• Qualitative and Quantitative Research - Concept
• Types of Marketing Research and their Application
• Focus Groups
• Depth Interview
• Projective Techniques
• Survey Method
• Techniques of Survey Method
• Observation Method
• Secondary Data
• Sources of Data
• What is Big Data ?
• Big Data and the Power to Predict
• Attitude Measurement Scales
• Questionnaire Design
• Statistical Tools and their Usage - Factor Analysis
• Conjoint Analysis - Meaning, Usage and its Limitations
• What is Mystery Shopping ?
• Regression Analysis
• Concept Testing
• Brand Health Survey
• Importance of Market Research to Organizations in an Age of Unpredictability
• It’s Not Just the Data that is collected that Counts, but, the Quality of the Data as well
• What is the Efficient Market Hypothesis and How it Works and Doesn’t Work in Practice

Conducting Field Research

Some of the most valuable information in the world isn't located in a library or online. Field research is a way of unearthing that information. If you enjoy meeting and talking with people and don't mind what reporters call "legwork," you will relish the fun and satisfaction of obtaining ideas and information first hand.

Field research can be an extraordinarily exciting and rewarding experience leading to important discoveries and breakthrough ideas. Its goal is the same as research done in the library or on the Internet: to gather information that contributes to your understanding of an issue or question and to organize those findings in a cohesive and persuasive document that proposes a new insight, answer or solution.

Far from being at odds with one another-philosophically or practically-these three research techniques actually complement each other. Library and Internet research provides critical background information that prepares the researcher for making observations, and conducting interviews and surveys in the field.

The results will verify or refute, inform and help shape the answer to your research question.

Observing in the Field

First-hand observations will often be a key component in your research project. Your task is to take it all in, recording what you observe while being as unobtrusive as possible. You will want to take notes for future reference: interesting facts, telling details and sensory impressions (sights, sounds and smells), all help when it comes time to reconstruct your observations on paper.

Before you begin, it's important to do a little "legwork". Library and Internet research will help you build a list of possible sites from which to conduct your observation. Depending on the type of site you wish to observe, you may or may not need permission. It's important to find out.

A few phone calls or email inquiries will identify the contact person from whom you can get that information and the procedures you will be expected to follow. You may need to schedule an appointment, for instance.

A private business or a school will likely require identification when you arrive, so be prepared. You might ask your instructor for a statement on college or department letterhead declaring that you are a bona fide student and some specifics about your project and what you intend to do with the results.

In addition to note-taking, you may want to take some photographs or video-tape while observing. Permission for this will also likely be required, as well as waivers or releases signed by the human subjects involved.

Finally, before leaving the observation site, it's a good idea to schedule or request permission for a follow-up visit. When evaluating your initial observations it is highly likely that you will find gaps in your information that can only be filled by further observation. It is also quite possible that your evaluation will produce new ideas or expose areas of interest, previously unthought-of, that you may like to pursue. If not, you can always cancel the follow-up.

Interviewing Experts

Sometimes, the best information comes "straight from the horse's mouth". An interview is a conversation with a purpose; that being, to gather information from a person with first-hand knowledge-a primary source. Whenever possible, arrange a meeting with an expert in the field of your inquiry. Or, if you are investigating a particular group of people, interview a typical member, someone who represents the whole group and can speak for all of them.

You'll be surprised just how many people, from all walks of life, are willing to be interviewed-some even flattered by your attention. Choose them carefully. Regardless of who they are, prepare to interview them thoroughly. Chapter 4 "Writing from Conversation," in the Bedford Guide to Writing, offers some good advice:

• Make an appointment and schedule enough time-at least an hour.
• Be prompt and be prepared. Bring a list of carefully thought-out questions.
• Make sure your subject is willing to be quoted in writing.
• Really listen. This is the art of the interview. Let the person open up.
• Be flexible and allow the interview to go in unexpected directions.
• If a question goes unanswered, go on to the next question. You may be able to come back to it later.
• At the end of the interview, be sure to confirm any direct quotations you may use in your document.
• Make additional notes immediately after the interview, while the conversation is still fresh in your mind.

Be sure to take notes during the interview. These will come in handy later, when you reconstruct the interview on paper. Even when audio-recording, you should do this: In addition to recording important points and accurate quotations, notes allow you to record details that do not lend themselves to audio-recording. Your subject's mood, appearance and behavior, for instance, as well as your sensory impressions of the interview setting will come in handy when you begin constructing your document.

If an expert isn't readily available-perhaps the nearest one is too far away-you may be able to arrange a telephone interview. Make an appointment for a time convenient for both you and your subject. A busy person may not be able to give you even ten minutes on the spur of a moment, but all the time in the world if arranged for in advance. A further word of advice, don't try to wing-it; have written questions in hand before you dial. Take notes and follow all the other rules just as if you were doing the interview in person.

Note: Federal regulations forbid recording an interview over the phone without notifying the person being interviewed. When recording over the phone, you must also use a recorder connector with a warning device that emits a beeping signal at fifteen second intervals.

Corresponding with Experts

Is there a person whose knowledge or opinions you'd like to include in your research gathering but who lives too far away for a personal interview? A letter or e-mail message may do the trick. Be sure to make it short and polite. If you're sending a letter, it's a real good idea to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope along with your questions. And, if you're using e-mail, place your questions directly into the text of your email message so that the recipient can respond using the reply button.

Large corporations and organizations, branches of the military and the federal government as well as elected officials are all accustomed to being solicited in this manner. In fact, many of them employ public relations officers whose duties include responding to such solicitation. They will often supply you with free brochures, press releases and other source materials geared toward your inquiry.

Conducting Surveys

Surveys and questionnaires are as much a part of contemporary life as iPods and cell phones. In fact, many people enjoy having their knowledge tapped or their opinion solicited. Filling out a questionnaire can even have a game-like appeal: self-quiz features appear in popular magazines and tabloid newspapers all the time. "How Ambitious Are You?" will headline a thirty-question quiz that you can score yourself. Used judiciously, and with the following points in mind, you may find it useful to conduct a small survey yourself, as part of a research project.

Survey Basics

As a rule, professional pollsters, opinion testers, and survey takers solicit thousands of individuals when exploring the answers to a question. They are chosen to represent either a certain segment of society or a broad range of the populace diversified in geography, income, ethnic background, and education.

The purpose of a survey may be to inform a manufacturer when test-marketing a new product or identifying a new market. Politicians use them to plan their campaigns and judge the mood of their constituents. Regardless, they are widely used because they deliver large stores of useful information quickly and efficiently.

Few student research-writers conduct such extensive surveys as the time, money and effort required is prohibitive. For smaller, less prohibitive surveys then, it is best to report the results of your survey in non-statistical terms.

It's one thing to say that "many of the students" who filled out a questionnaire on reading habits hadn't read a newspaper in the past month; it's another to claim such is true of "seventy-two percent" of the student population when you were only able to give questionnaires to the twenty-two percent who were in the dining hall the day you were there and half of those threw them in the trash on the way out.

A far more useful and reliable way to use a questionnaire is to think of it as a group interview. Use it when you want to collect the same information from a large number of people or when you're more interested in what a group thinks as a whole than what a particular individual thinks. Treat the information you collect as representative and use your findings to build an overall knowledge of the subject or to cull them for interesting or persuasive details and quotations.

Define Your Purpose

If you think you want to use a survey to gather information, you need have a clearly defined purpose. You need to ask yourself:

• What am I trying to discover with this questionnaire?

You will want to build questions that are well thought out and which fulfill your purpose. If, for instance, you want to know how effective a day-care center is in the eyes of working mothers who entrust their children to it's care, you might ask questions like:

• Do your children report that they are happy there?
• Have you ever had reason to complain?
• If so, about what?

Keep it Simple

Any questionnaire you design has to be one that people are willing to answer. The main point is to make participation easy and inviting. If it's too complex or time-consuming, the recipient may throw it away.

Ask questions that call for a check mark in a list of alternative answers, a simple yes or no, or one word (at the most, just a few). As you write each question, check carefully for how well it fits your stated purpose. Check for ambiguity and whether they will elicit the kind of responses for which you are looking. It's a good idea to ask for just one piece of information per question.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

In addition to simple yes/no and multiple-choice questions, you might find it worth while to ask a few "open-ended questions". These call for short written responses. Although they are typically difficult to tally and are likely to draw a smaller number of responses, those you do get might supply a memorable quote or suggest some new ideas when you assess and analyze the results.

Avoid Slanted Questions

Be careful to build unbiased questions that will solicit factual responses. Don't ask:

• How religious are you?

You want to be able to report actual numbers or draw logical inferences about the respondents. Better questions might be:

• What is your religious affiliation?
• How often do you attend religious services?

Make it Easy for People to Respond

Whenever possible, distribute questionnaire at the end of a meeting or discussion. If that's not possible, assemble a group and have them fill out your questionnaire on the spot-at an evening coffee for parents with children in day-care, for instance. Facing them, you can explain the purpose of your research and invite questions, the answers to which will instill confidence and build interest.

If you must mail your questionnaire, include a concise letter explaining your purpose and what use you will make of the replies along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. You might also indicate how much time will be required: no more than ten minutes, for instance, or some estimate identifying the task as reasonable and easy.

Professional pollsters often offer a small inducement, a morsel of bait to increase the rate of response: a small check or a coupon good for a free jar of pickles. You might promise a copy of your finished document, a brief report of the results, or a listing of each respondent's name in an acknowledgment.

Even with such inducements, professionals find a response rate of fifty percent or higher difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. That is why they often conduct surveys by telephone, with the caller filling in the questionnaire for the respondent. You might also use this technique, but better results will come if you distribute your questionnaire in person.

Tally the Results

When all the responses that you can reasonably expect to collect have been received, sit down and tally up the results. It's easy to count the short answers: the yes's and no's and the one word answers-like Republican or Democrat-but the longer ones are more difficult.

• What is your goal in life?

The answers to open-ended questions need to be summed up or paraphrased and then sorted into rough categories.

• To grow rich
• To serve humanity
• To save my soul

Similar responses can be lumped together and counted, accurately measuring the extent of, or pattern to, the available responses.

Media Genres: Television, Radio, Film, etc.

Intriguing possibilities for field research lie in the media. For a research paper about television and radio, movies, theater or music, you may find the materials close at hand. In the case of television, it's as close as the remote.

Our only advice is to review plenty: watch (or listen) to a large amount before drawing conclusions. Use a VCR, DVD, or other audio-video recording device to keep track of your research and to preserve a record for future reference.

Transcripts, broadcast tapes or telecasts may be available on request, or for a small fee, from network or cable stations. Call, write or email your inquiries.

Lectures, Conferences, Online Forums, and Other Public Discussions

Field research often involves attending a lecture, conference or other public discussion. College organizations frequently bring interesting speakers to campus: the science club might sponsor a nationally known marine biologist, for instance, or the film club might bring in the producer of a successful television program.

Likewise, bound by mutual affiliation, professionals and members of special-interest groups are brought together at regularly scheduled regional and national conferences across this country every day. Regardless of cost, you may want to attend one that addresses your particular research interests.

Health-care providers, legal experts, engineers, scientists and teachers attend them frequently in the course of their professional duties and to further they're careers. You can do the same. They can be a fertile source of fresh ideas and are often open to the public: sometimes admission is free or student discounts are available.

Regardless of cost, attending a professional conference affords an opportunity for taking notes at lectures given by experts and the chance to meet and talk with speakers and fellow attendees as well as to learn and practice the language of a discipline. In addition, you may be able to obtain a copy of the proceedings-usually a set of all the lectures delivered, sometimes with accompanying commentary.

Be on the lookout as well for online discussions such as Chat Room sessions sponsored by Yahoo or CNN Online-that are relevant to your research topic. You can participate in the discussion as an observer, or participate by posting questions. Remember to use your Chat Room program to record the session for later review. You can learn how to record a transcript by consulting the program's online help.

Palmquist, Mike, & Peter Connor. (2007). Conducting Field Research. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=23

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Despite the risk of coming across as rather biased, sociologists believe that their discipline is one of the most important in the academic world. They explain that while it's important to understand the laws of physics and human bodies at the cellular level, our man-made systems, everyday interactions and normalized behaviors are just as important. 

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For this reason, sociologists often step out into the 'real world' to ask and answer difficult questions about the human condition. This is known as field research .

• In this explanation, we will explore the method of field research (sometimes referred to as 'fieldwork').
• We'll start by unpacking a field research definition, and then we'll explore the importance of field research in the social sciences.
• Next, we'll look at the various types of field research, as well as their relative uses in sociology.
• To cement our understanding of this method, we'll then take a look at some famous field research examples.
• Finally, we'll look at the various advantages and disadvantages of field research.

Definition of Field Research

Field research goes by a few different names depending on the specific aims and methods used in the research process. For instance, fieldwork , ethnography and observation are all often used interchangeably with the term 'field research'.

What is Field Research?

Field research is a qualitative method in which researchers observe how people live their real lives in their natural environment s .

Fieldwork tends to take a qualitative form because researchers are usually interested in collecting rich and detailed primary data. They tend to observe and analyze existing social situations to develop theories and concept s , which can potentially be generalized to broader populations.

Building theories from data is known as inductive research . This is the opposite of deductive research , which involves testing existing theories with research methods and data.

The field researcher also has to be willing to explore, participate in and experience new environments. Examples of fieldwork topics include:

• the work environment in a corporate office,
• the learning methods used in a middle school classroom,
• the work dynamics in a popular restaurant's kitchen, or
• the daily life of a homeless person.

Conducting Field Research

As we will come to learn, there are various kinds of field research that have their own uses, advantages and limitations. However, there are certain steps that are universal to field (and other types of) research, including:

Identifying a social problem or 'puzzle' that is misunderstood or unexplored.

Examining whether it would be possible to gain access to the site of that problem, whether this is a large corporate office or a remote tribe.

Deciding which method(s) would be suitable for your research aims.

If you were to study a corporate office culture, you might gain more insight by hiding the fact that you are a researcher to gain the trust of the research participants. On the other hand, when studying a remote tribe, overt, participant research would be more ethical, and unstructured interviews could provide more insight.

Another factor which influences the choice of methods is the ability to note down findings. If participants are aware of your presence as a researcher, you can take note of your observation out in the open.

However, if you are 'undercover', you may need to step away every once in a while to take notes in private, or retain your observations throughout the day, so you can make note of them at home in the evening.

Analyzing the data after it has been collected, and drawing conclusions from the findings.

Communicating your research findings and evaluating your methods for any strengths or limitations that came up throughout the process.

The Importance of Field Research

Field research is an important method because it involves observing people's behaviors in their natural environments . For example, when research subjects participate in laboratory research, the awareness of being in a laboratory (and knowing that they are being evaluated) may cause those subjects to behave in unnatural ways. Field research helps make up for this lack of validity by taking away the artificial environment and its unintended effects.

Regardless, it is still difficult to narrow down the causes and impacts of particular aspects in a natural environment - because it is totally uncontrolled! For this reason, fieldwork is important not for establishing cause and effect , but for making correlations .

When studying relationships between multiple variables, causation implies that some variables are the result of others. A correlational relationship simply suggests that the variables are connected in some way.

Types of Field Research

As mentioned earlier, there are various types of field research - each suited to unique aims, practicalities and research orientations.

Ethnography is the systematic study of human cultures, communities and livelihoods.

The main aim of ethnography is to understand how research subjects understand their livelihoods on their own, as well as in relation to the broader community. While ethnographic research is a field of study , it can use of participant observation, which is a research method . It often takes place over an extended period of time - perhaps even up to a few years.

Some examples of different types of ethnography include:

Institutional ethnography , which looks at how various institutions impact our day-to-day lives and activities.

Business ethnographic research targets consumer behavior by examining markets, target markets and demands.

Educational ethnographic research helps researchers observe and analyze teaching and learning methods.

Medical ethnographic research tells researchers about the needs of those seeking healthcare.

To learn more about ethnography, take a look at the dedicated explanation on the StudySmarter web-app!

Participant Observation

In participant observation , the researcher integrates themselves into a group to study their way of life, their culture, and how they structure their community.

This research method is useful for field researchers who want to understand the workings of a particular environment as an insider in that community. The researcher will take part in the group's daily activities and routines to understand (and perhaps even take up) their perspective.

This also means that the researcher should try to avoid influencing any group behavior or opinions. For this reason, the researcher might go undercover and carry out a covert participant observation .

In covert research , the participants aren't aware that there's a researcher present among them.

In overt research , the research participants are aware of the researcher's presence and their task.

A field researcher may also choose to carry out a non-participant observational study . In non-participant observation , the researcher doesn't join the group being studied, but simply observes that group in their natural environment.

To learn more about observation, take a look at the dedicated explanation on the StudySmarter web-app!

In-depth explorations of a particular person, group, community, organization, situation or event are called case studies .

Case studies are conducted with a narrow focus in mind, so they can't be used to make wide, generalizable claims about particular situations.

A sociologist might use this method to study a particular case in-depth. Examples of cases they might explore are:

• gang members,
• a cancer patient,
• adoptive parents,
• victims of abuse, or
• a special needs carer.

Case studies can be considered fieldwork because they involve a close, often lengthy investigation of a situation. The researcher might immerse themselves in the case study's day-to-day lives. They might also use relevant personal documents, like diaries or letters, to help their analysis.

To learn more about case studies, take a look at the dedicated explanation on the StudySmarter web-app!

Field Research Examples

Let's take a look at some examples of field research in sociology.

Ethnographic Study Example: The Making of Middletown

Robert and Helen Lynd (1924) conducted an ethnographic study in Muncie, Indiana. They aimed to examine the day-to-day lives of the average American. The ethnography involved the use of observation, interviews, surveys and secondary data analysis.

Two types of classes were identified in Muncie - business class groups and the working class groups . These class groups had very different lifestyles, levels of wealth, and life goals.

Participant Observational Study Example: On the Run

A very famous participant observation was conducted by Alice Goffman (2014) over the span of six years. Goffman observed the lives of a poor, Black, community subjected to high levels of surveillance, in West Philadelphia. Goffman had a community member introduce her as his sister to gain access for a covert, participant observation.

Case Study Example

Another famous example of field research - this time, a case study - was conducted by Stephen Ball (1981). Over a span of three years, Ball closely observed two groups of students at the Beachside Comprehensive school. He aimed to find out why working-class students underperformed, particularly in the context of this specific school.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Field Research

As is the case with all sociological methods, field research has several advantages and disadvantages. Let's take a look at these now.

Benefits of Field Research

The main appeal of fieldwork is that the research subjects can be observed in their own environments carrying out their regular, daily routines. This increases the validity of results.

From this, researchers can obtain detailed and accurate information in real time.

Field research may involve combining various methods (such as observation and interviews). This is known as methodological pluralism or triangulation . It also helps generate high levels of validity and holism .

Through fieldwork, researchers try to get access to important information and experiences by gaining the trust of their research subjects. This can help researchers understand what people do, as well as why and how they do it.

Limitations of Field Research

Fieldwork, especially as case studies and participant observational studies, tend to examine a particular situation. This means the results don't tend to be generalizable to wider populations or groups.

Notably, field research is subjected to many ethical considerations. A researcher who immerses themselves into the lives of a community, particularly if they are doing so covertly, raises questions about informed consent , privacy and confidentiality .

Some researchers suggest that all observation is theory-dependent . This means that, to understand the behavior and environment they are observing, the researcher already needs to have a certain level of knowledge about it. Not having this knowledge may lead to misinterpretations and inaccurate findings .

If conducting fieldwork on a dangerous or deviant situation, there is a risk that the researcher will get involved in such behavior in order to avoid being exposed as a researcher.

On the other hand, if the presence of the researcher is known, the validity of the study is compromised because of the Hawthorne effect . This is when research subjects change their behavior because they know they are being observed.

Field Research - Key takeaways

• Field research can be defined as a qualitative method in which researchers observes how people live their real lives in their natural environment s .
• Fieldwork tends to take a qualitative form because researchers are usually interested in collecting rich and detailed primary data.
• Types of field research include ethnography, participant observation and case studies.
• Field research is beneficial because it provides high levels of validity due to the natural conditions in which it is conducted.
• On the other hand, field research is subjected to limitations such as a lack of generalizability, ethical breaches and the Hawthorne effect.

Flashcards in Field Research 20

When studying relationships between multiple variables, causation implies  that some variables are the result of others. C orrelation  simply suggests that the variables are connected in some way. 

The main variants of ethnography include:

• institutional ethnography,
• business ethnographic research,
• educational ethnographic research, and
• medical ethnographic research. 

In   participant observation , the researcher integrates themselves into a group to study their way of life, their culture, and how they structure their community. This involves them taking part in the group's daily activities and routines. 

• In   covert research , the participants aren't aware that there's a researcher present among them.
• In   overt  research , the research participants are aware of the researcher's presence and their task. 

In-depth explorations of a particular person, group, community, organization, situation or event are called case studies.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Field Research

What is field research in sociology?

Field research can be defined as a qualitative method in which researchers observe how people live their real lives in their natural environments.

What is an example of field research?

A famous example of field research was conducted by Alice Goffman (2014), who observed the lives of a poor, Black community subjected to high levels of surveillance in West Philadelphia. She used covert participant observation as her main research method.

What are the three types of field research?

The three types of field research are ethnography, participant observation and case study.

What can you get from field research?

The main appeal of fieldwork is that it tends to generate high levels of validity  within rich, detailed and accurate information in real time. 

Why is field research important?

Field research is an important method because it involves observing people's behaviors in their natural environments. This makes for high levels of validity by removing the barrier of artificial environments and set ups. 

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Field Research – Reasons And Methods

June 12, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

Field research can be defined as a qualitative method of data collection that aims at observing, understanding, and interacting with people. This observation of people is done in the natural environment of the people.

For example, nature enthusiasts observe animal behavior in their wild surroundings to find the way they react in specific scenarios. Similarly, social scientists conduct field research and observe people and conduct interviews to understand their behavior in their social environment and how they respond to different situations.

There are different methods of social research methods that are used by field research like direct observation, document analysis, limited participation, surveys, and interviews, etc. Field research is categorized as qualitative research , and it involves many aspects of quantitative research.

Field research starts in a specific setting and even though the end objective is to analyze and observe the behavior of the subject in their natural environment. Although it is difficult to understand the cause and effect of the particular behavior of the subject, it is due to multiple variables. Most of the data which is collected is not based entirely on cause and effect correlation. Typically the small sample size makes it difficult to establish cause and effect relation.

Table of Contents

Reasons for conducting field research

Field research can be used in many cases in social sciences, but it takes a lot of time to complete and is very expensive as well as invasive. But it is also commonly used and is preferred by many researchers to validate the data. Here are a few significant reasons why this is so:

• Overcoming data lacking: A significant gap in data is resolved by field research. Usually, there are fewer data about a study topic, and this is especially true in specific environments. The problem may or may not be known, but there is no way to prove it without the data collection and analysis and primary research . Field research not only helps to plug in the gaps in data but also collects supporting material. This is why it is a preferred method of researchers.
• Understanding: Data collection is insufficient in many cases, but the field research is conducted nevertheless. This gains insight into the present and existing data. For example, if the data says that a pizza place sells a pepperoni pizza, the most and the owner says the reason for it is they use fresh pepperoni. But research will help to gain new insights and other factors which are leading people to buy pizza. It may be the price of the product .
• Improving the data quality: Because the research method uses more than a single tool for data collection, the data is of very high quality. Inferences may be made from the data collected, and it can be analyzed structurally.
• Supplementary data: Field research habituates the researchers to adopt localized thinking which opens a new line of thinking. This can assist in collecting the data which the study did not want to collect.

How to conduct Field research?

Owing to the nature of field research, the costs and the timeline required, it can be challenging for field research to plan and be implemented. However, the following are a few of the necessary steps in field research:

• Building the right team : It is essential to have the right team to conduct field research. The role of the researcher and every other team member is crucial. It is equally important to define the tasks which they have to carry out with properly defined milestones. Also, senior management is vested in the process of field research and for its success.
• Recruiting the people: The ultimate success of field research depends entirely on the people on which the study is being conducted. With the use of sampling methods, it is crucial to derive the people who will be a part of your study. The better the sampling method is implemented, the better the people will be who will participate in the study.
• Data collection method: Methods of data collection are various. There could be interviews, surveys, observations, case studies, and a mix of them. Everything has to be written out properly, and the milestones for every method should be pre-defined at the beginning. For example, the survey design is crucial in the case of a survey that is created and tested before the research.
• Site Visit: It is essential to have a site visit for the success of field research. Usually, the site visit is conducted outside of regular locations and in the natural environment of the respondent. Therefore planning a site visit is crucial with data collection.
• Data Analysis : Data analysis is crucial to validate the assumptions of the research and decide the conclusion of the field research.
• Communicating the results: After the data analysis is complete, it is crucial to communicate the results obtained to the stakeholders of that research. This is done so that the stakeholders can take necessary action on the results.

4 Methods of field research

Following are the methods of the field research:

1. Direct observation

In the case of direct observation, the data is collected with the help of close inspection of natural behavior or setting. Rather than engaging the members actively in conversations, the direct observer tries to be detached and does not cause any obstruction in the setting. Direct observation may not be an alternative to different types of field research like participant observation.

It may be a preliminary approach for understanding an environment or form of behavior or individuals or groups before interacting with the members or developing the protocols of the interview. Using direct observation is not recommended in a private environment.

Advantages of direct observation method

• It offers a first hand and unfiltered data on individuals and their settings, interactions, etc.
• The data can be reliable and trustworthy since it is collected first hand.

Disadvantages of Direct observation method

• There could be many unusual behaviors that would not be typical. Reporting such behavior is not only challenging but including them in the report could affect the results and conclusions.
• Gathering the data by direct observation is a difficult and challenging task. Sometimes it could also cost a lot since the observers would be required to travel to the natural setting.
• Chances of researcher induced research bias are high.

Types of Data collected during direct observation

• The primary form of direct observation in the field notes. Field notes consist of detailed behavior, setting, or conversations that are recorded by the researcher.
• Structured protocols may be used as an alternative approach. Structured protocols contain a rating scale or checklist.
• Video clips and photographs are also a form of data collected.

This method of direct observation is useful when open, or public settings are used. As mentioned above, ethical concerns may arise through the use of direct observation methods in private settings.

2. Participant Observation

The participant method is a method of field research in which the researcher develops a detailed understanding of the composition of a specific society or setting by participating in the everyday rituals with its members. It was initially conceived in the early 20th century by anthropologists who were researching for native communities in different developing countries.

Now the method has become popular and is used by researchers to study a lot of issues. This is the primary research method which is used by ethnographers. Ethnographers are the ones who work in sociology and anthropology.

They focus on recording the specific details of social life, which occurs in a particular society or setting. The ethnographer who lives amongst the members of the community for many months or years tries to build long-lasting, trusting relations so that he can become a part of their social setting. Slowly, the ethnographer gains the trust of the members, and they start behaving naturally in the ethnographer’s presence.

• The ethnographer, with the help of participant observation, develops a thick understanding of the setting and its members in a society.
• This provides him with a privilege to observe the people in a natural setting with them. This generates useful data for the research.

Disadvantages

• The researcher is expected to spend a lot of time and money to develop this understanding of people.
• The objectivity of the ethnographer may reduce by spending a lot of time with the members.

Types of data collected from the participant observation method

• The primary data obtained from this research are field notes. The ethnographer notes down all the observations as well as his experiences and then develops it into detailed formal notes.
• Ethnographers usually keep a diary which is a more close and informal record of all the things happening in their surroundings.
• The art of participant observation with the emphasis on developing relations with the members may lead to informal and conversational interviews rather than in-depth interviews. The data collected from these interviews become a part of field notes. The data may also consist of different interview transcripts.

Ethnography and ethical issues

One of the primary issues which confront ethnographers is deciding how and when to inform the members about them being a part of a research study. The ethnographer can identify himself as an observer at the beginning of the participant observation.

A general description of the objectives of the research should suffice. As time goes and relation develops with participants, then he can disclose the controversial aspects of the study, if any. Informed consent should be gotten from any member who agrees for a formal interview.

3. Qualitative Interviews

These are the types of field research that gathers data by directly asking questions to the participants. There are three types of qualitative interviews:

• Informal conversational interview
• Semi-structured
• Standardized open-ended interviews
• Informal conversational interview: These are the ones that typically occur during observation of participant or after direct observation The researcher starts by conversing with a single member about the setting. As the conversation proceeds, the researcher formulates particular questions, randomly, and starts asking them. This is done informally. When the researcher needs maximum flexibility to pursue the ideas and topics as and when they emerge in the conversation.
• These interviews allow the researcher to be very responsive to the individual differences and also to capture the emerging information.

Disadvantage:

• It may generate very less systematic data which is difficult to classify.
• Semi- Structured Interviews : This method involves recruiting the members formally from a setting to conduct an interview. Before the interview, a list of predetermined questions which is also known as an interview guide are prepared so that every participant will respond to similar questions. These questions are open-ended so that a lot of data can be collected from the participant. The researcher can pursue other topics as they emerge during the interview.
• Semi-structured interviews help to capture systematic data across the participants.
• Semi-structured interviews do not offer a lot of flexibility to respond to the new topics which unfold during the interview.
• Standardized open-ended interviews: These interviews are very much like surveys because the questions are scripted carefully and written before the interview. This helps to reduce the variability in the wordings of the questions. The researcher usually asks a series of questions in the same order to every participant. This method is suitable for qualitative studies which involve multiple participants.

Advantage: Compatibility is enabled across participants.

Disadvantage: This does not offer a lot of flexibility to respond to the new topics which come up during the interview.

Both semi-structured and standard interviews are recorded and should start by obtaining informed consent from the participant before the interview begins. The researcher also can write a separate note to describe the reaction of members to the interview or to the events which happened pre or post-interview.

4. Case Study

An in-depth analysis of a person or event is called a case study. This method is challenging to operate, but it is one of the easiest ways of researching since it involves a deep dive and with the understanding of data collection methods thoroughly and then concluding the data.

Advantages of field research

Following are the advantages of field research:

• The field research is usually carried out in a real-world environment where there is hardly any tampering of the variables, and the environment is not manipulated.
• Because the study is being conducted in a comfortable environment, the data collection can be done about supplementary topics which can be used elsewhere.
• The researcher gets a deep understanding of the research topics since he has proximity to them. This leads the research to be extensive and accurate.

Disadvantages of Field research

Following are the disadvantages of Field research:

• The field research studies are costly as well as time-consuming. They can take years to complete at times.
• Research bias is a common problem arising in almost every field of research.
• The method of field research is interpretive and is dependent on the ability of researchers to collect, analyze, as well as interpret data.
• External variables and interferences are challenging to control with this method, and it affects the outcome of the research at times..

Here is a video by Marketing91 on Field Research.

Examples of Field research

Understanding the impact of sports on child development

This kind of research can take several years to conduct since the sample size is enormous. The analysis of the collected data will provide insight into how sports affects the overall development of the kids. These kids may be present in different geographies or single geography, and several sports may be studied, or an only sport or a combination of both can be used.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Market research

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• What is Field Testing and How to do It? Advantages & Disadvantages
• 11 Reasons Why Importance of Research Advice for Business
• What is Behavioral research? Importance, Methods & Examples
• Descriptive Research – Characteristics, Methods, Examples, Advantages
• Research Methodology – Overview, Types and Methods
• What is Research Design? Type of Research Designs
• How to Write Research Proposal? Research Proposal Format
• 7 Key Differences between Research Method and Research Methodology
• Qualitative Research: Meaning, and Features of Qualitative Research
• Research Ethics – Importance and Principles of Ethics in Research

About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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Why does research matter?

Victor h hu.

Assistant Clinical Professor: International Centre for Eye Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Consultant Ophthalmologist: Mid Cheshire NHS Hospitals, UK.

A working knowledge of research – both how it is done, and how it can be used – is important for everyone involved in direct patient care and the planning & delivery of eye programmes.

A research coordinator collecting data from a health extension worker. ethiopia

The mention of ‘research’ can be off-putting and may seem irrelevant in the busy environment of a clinic or hospital. However, research is central to all aspects of eye care delivery – both inside and outside the clinic.

Whether we are health workers, public health practitioners, managers, policy makers, or editors – all of us ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’: we rely on the research done by others before us. This can be as simple – and profound – as hand washing between patients; a habit that only became common practice in the 1870s, following the work of the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister. Or it can be as complex as making a diagnosis of glaucoma and knowing what treatment to give. All current eye care practice is based on research. Clinical, operational (eye care delivery) and public health practice will continue to be profoundly shaped by new research developments.

What is research?

In its simplest form, research is about investigating the world around us to increase our knowledge, so we can work out how to do things better.

In health care, we use a scientific approach to carry out research; there is a set way of doing things that ensures research is done in a logical way, and that results are published widely, so that other people can scrutinise what has been done. This gives us confidence that the results will be useful in everyday practice.

It is important to critically evaluate research and research findings, including checking that research has been carried out in the proper way, and whether the conclusions that have been made are reasonable and justified. One of the ways in which the scientific community ensures the quality of research is through the process of peer review. Before research papers are accepted for publication in a scientific journal, they are reviewed by other researchers (peer reviewed) to check the quality of the research and the validity of the results and conclusions. Even so, the quality of published research can vary.

This is why systematic reviews and meta-analyses are so valuable: they answer important questions by identifying, evaluating, and summarising good quality evidence from a range of published research papers. Often, systematic reviews conclude that there is not enough evidence to answer a question with absolute certainty, or to produce an answer that will be applicable in different countries or health care settings. This is useful, as it gives researchers guidance about where more research is needed (see article on page 13).

But this can be a challenge for clinicians – how can we make good decisions in the absence of definitive evidence? Clinical experience is very important, but where possible this should be informed by good research – see page 6 for practical tips.

Health care practitioners and managers can also use guidance from professional bodies such as the World Health Organization. The article on page 8 explains the process by which guidelines are developed and shows why we can rely on them.

In conclusion, research is fundamental to the everyday practice of health care professionals, including eye care workers. Research allows us to find out new things and to provide better care for patients. There are many different types of research that can be carried out and these can vary enormously. It is important to ask the right question, as this will determine the type of research that is done (see page 5).

All of us can participate in research: it starts with asking questions and then going to find out the answers. The article on page 10 offers practical suggestions for carrying out small-scale research that is relevant and useful to eye care.

Types of health research

Basic science research, such as in molecular genetics or cell biology, fills the gaps in our understanding of disease mechanisms (pathogenesis).

Clinical research addresses how diseases in individuals can present and be diagnosed, and how a condition progresses and can be managed.

Epidemiological research , which is at the population level (as opposed to the individual level), answers questions about the number of people in the population who have a condition, what factors (called exposures) are causing the condition, and how it can be treated or prevented at the population level.

Going beyond epidemiology, there is also operational and health systems research , which focuses on how best to deliver health interventions, clinical and rehabilitation services, or behaviour change initiatives.

Other types of research , which are also important for public health, include health economics, social science, and statistical modelling.

Finally, systematic literature reviews can be very useful, as they identify and summarise the available evidence on a specific topic.

By Clare Gilbert and GVS Murthy

Examples of research questions and how they have been answered

Can povidone iodine prevent endophthalmitis.

In many eye departments, cataract surgery is a frequently preformed operation. One of the most serious complications is infection within the eye (endophthalmitis) which can lead to loss of vision. Several well conducted randomised controlled clinical trials have shown that instilling 0.5% aqueous povidone iodine eye drops, an antiseptic agent, before surgery reduces the risk of this devastating infection, with the first trial undertaken in 1991. 1

What is the best treatment for primary open-angle glaucoma?

Chronic glaucoma can be a very difficult condition to manage, particularly when patients often only present to eye departments once they have already had significant vision loss. Eye drops which lower intraocular pressure are often prescribed; however, patients may not use the eyedrops because they are expensive, can be difficult to instil, and do not improve their vision. Surgery is an option, but patients can be reluctant to undergo surgery on their only good eye, and there can be postoperative complications. Laser treatment is another option. In a recent study in Tanzania, patients were randomly allocated to Timolol 0.5% eye drops or a form of laser called Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT). 2 After one year, SLT was found to be superior to drops for high-pressure glaucoma.

Why don't older adults in England have their eyes examined?

Focus group discussions among older adults in England revealed that, despite most participants being eligible for state-funded check-ups, wearing spectacles was associated with the appearance of being frail. They were also afraid of appearing to ‘fail’ tests, and had concerns about the cost of spectacles. 3

How cost effective is a diabetic retinopathy screening programme?

An economic evaluation in South Africa compared alternative interventions. Screening using non-mydriatic retinal photographs taken by a technician supervised by an ophthalmic nurse and read by a general medical officer was cost-effective and the savings made allowed the government to fund disability grants for people who went blind. 4

Acknowledgements

Stephen Gichuhi and Nyawira Mwangi contributed to preliminary work on this article.

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Importance of Research

Students will understand the importance of research in academic essays, learning to support arguments with credible evidence. They will promote critical thinking and ensure the relevance and reliability of their writing.

Objectives:

• Define “research”
• Explain the importance and benefit of research

Sample In-Class Activities

• Group Discussion

Recommended for: All Students

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• Open access
• Published: 19 August 2024

If health organisations and staff engage in research, does healthcare improve? Strengthening the evidence base through systematic reviews

• Annette Boaz 1 ,
• Belinda Goodenough 2 ,
• Stephen Hanney 3 &
• Bryony Soper 3  

Health Research Policy and Systems volume  22 , Article number:  113 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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There is an often-held assumption that the engagement of clinicians and healthcare organizations in research improves healthcare performance at various levels. Previous reviews found up to 28 studies suggesting a positive association between the engagement of individuals and healthcare organizations in research and improvements in healthcare performance. The current study sought to provide an update.

We updated our existing published systematic review by again addressing the question: Does research engagement (by clinicians and organizations) improve healthcare performance? The search covered the period 1 January 2012 to March 2024, in two phases. First, the formal updated search ran from 1 January 2012 to 31 May 2020, in any healthcare setting or country and focussed on English language publications. In this phase two searches identified 66 901 records. Later, a further check of key journals and citations to identified papers ran from May 2020 to March 2024. In total, 168 papers progressed to full-text appraisal; 62 were identified for inclusion in the update. Then we combined papers from our original and updated reviews.

In the combined review, the literature is dominated by papers from the United States (50/95) and mostly drawn from the Global North. Papers cover various clinical fields, with more on cancer than any other field; 86 of the 95 papers report positive results, of which 70 are purely positive and 16 positive/mixed, meaning there are some negative elements (i.e. aspects where there is a lack of healthcare improvement) in their findings.

Conclusions

The updated review collates a substantial pool of studies, especially when combined with our original review, which are largely positive in terms of the impact of research engagement on processes of care and patient outcomes. Of the potential engagement mechanisms, the review highlights the important role played by research networks. The review also identifies various papers which consider how far there is a “dose effect” from differing amounts of research engagement. Additional lessons come from analyses of equity issues and negative papers. This review provides further evidence of contributions played by systems level research investments such as research networks on processes of care and patient outcomes.

Peer Review reports

There is an often-held assumption that the engagement of clinicians and healthcare organizations in research improves healthcare performance at various levels. This assumption contributed to policy documents from various health organizations promoting research engagement by healthcare providers as a way of improving healthcare, for example, in the United Kingdom [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Therefore, it was believed that policy-makers who make relevant decisions, such as on the allocation of resources for health and health research systems, should have access to evidence on the validity of the assumption. In the United Kingdom, two programmes of the National Institute for Health Research (now called the National Institute for Health and Care Research) (NIHR) decided to commission reviews of the global evidence on this [ 1 , 2 , 3 ].

The wide-ranging brief provided for the second review, which was the original review by the authors of this present paper (published in full as Hanney et al. in 2013 [ 3 ] and more succinctly as Boaz et al. in 2015 [ 2 ]), included the additional aim of conducting a theoretically grounded synthesis to explore the mechanisms by which research engagement might improve healthcare [ 3 ]. The protocol for that study considered pertinent global literature, including on accelerating the adoption of evidence in health systems, and ways to enhance the relevance of the research conducted to the needs of health systems. The final protocol published as part of the Hanney et al. report [ 3 ] then used these ideas to identify possible mechanisms that would be worth analysing to help understand the processes that might be at work when research engagement leads to improved health. Among these was the idea that engaging in conducting research increases the ability and willingness of clinicians to use research findings from the global pool of knowledge, and here the concept of “absorptive capacity” was expected to be useful [ 3 ].

Some analyses focussed on the importance of exploring the relationship between research engagement and improved healthcare to contribute towards understanding of the benefits for healthcare performance in the context of a strong research culture. These papers were reviewed in Australia by Harding et al. in 2017 [ 4 ].

As far as we are aware, these three systematic literature reviews published in the second decade of this century provided the first analyses of the empirical evidence available to support the assumption of improved healthcare from research engagement [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Their differing scopes and approaches are summarized briefly in Table  1 .

All three of the reviews reported some evidence of a positive association between research engagement and healthcare performance, but the available evidence was not mature enough to support statements about causality [ 2 ]. Our review [ 2 , 3 ] had the widest scope of the three, reflecting the broad brief given by our NIHR funder. It included an extensive initial mapping exercise, a formal focussed review, and a wider review which drew on the earlier stages to explore, as noted above, the mechanisms by which research engagement might improve healthcare [ 3 ]. Our review identified 33 papers from 9 countries (15 from the United States), 28 of which reported positive findings [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Even our review concluded, however, that there did not appear to be a well-structured, steadily accumulating body of knowledge about the benefits associated with research engagement.

In the succeeding years, we have identified a continuing and growing interest in this general topic, therefore an updated review seemed desirable to gather more evidence about how far research engagement might lead to improved healthcare and the mechanisms involved. In addition to these general questions, our original review had identified two specific issues that could usefully be considered further. These were research networks as potentially important mechanisms through which research engagement might improve healthcare, and whether greater amounts of research engagement would have a larger beneficial effect. Our original review also covered some aspects of a third issue (health equity) that has subsequently become increasingly important [ 2 , 3 ].

The growing development of research networks has been associated with efforts to move towards more formalized attempts to boost the role of health research systems in accelerating science and facilitating the translation of research into practice [ 2 , 3 ]. However, at the time of our original review, the evidence was still emerging and its availability was heavily skewed by the different timing of the establishment of formal research networks in different countries.

In the United States, various research networks had been set up in the second half of the last century, and most of the early papers on networks and their role came from there [ 2 ]. These networks in the United States are described in the “Glossary of the United States of America and United Kingdom Research Organizations and Networks Discussed in the Papers” (see Additional file 1 ). They include the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded Cancer Community Oncology Program (CCOP), established to encourage outreach and improve equity by bringing the advantages of clinical research to cancer patients in their own communities [ 37 ]. In the United Kingdom in contrast, national research networks were not formally created until this century, too late for any potential benefits to patient outcomes to be fully researched and reported prior to our review which started in 2011. However, even in our original review we were aware of concurrent United Kingdom work to measure those outcomes and to improve patient access to clinical research, and identified a need for further evaluations (see Hanney et al. [ 3 ], pp. 48, 83).

Subsequently, we also became increasingly aware of new studies on the effects of the developing research networks, especially in the United Kingdom, and Boaz et al. identified a promising approach in statistical analysis that could help further analysis [ 2 ]. As set out in the Glossary, there have been policy shifts and organizational changes in the United States and the United Kingdom, and there have been further ones elsewhere, which are designed to promote research networks to address the time lag between the production of research and its use in practice, including various efforts to strengthen links between academic centres and community services. There has also been an increasing emphasis, including within research networks, on the potential research contribution of healthcare professionals other than medical professionals.

Our original review had also noted a partly related second issue as worthy of further attention. This is the question of whether the association between research engagement by healthcare providers and improved healthcare outcomes increases with greater amounts of research participation. There was early evidence that it did. This came, in particular, from the 2008 paper by Majumdar et al. [ 26 ] that compared outcomes for patients with angina in hospitals in the United States having a high level of angina research activity with hospitals with low research activity, and those with no research activity. Other papers compared centres with different levels of research activity within a research network [ 23 ]. However, there was little certainty about extent and implications around this issue at that time, although it has become increasingly important with the development of the comprehensive research networks that we summarize in the Glossary. It also has theoretical implications for the exact nature of the association between research engagement and improved healthcare: in our original review we argued that further data on this effect, and on the time an institution was research active, “are needed to provide evidence of causation” (p. 12) [ 2 ].

These findings also have implications for health equity, the third unresolved issue. More outreach by research networks means more access to clinical research and its benefits for more patients. The United States CCOP has been rightly lauded for achieving this [ 37 ], but can that be squared with the emerging finding that higher levels of research participation in specific provider institutions bring greater benefit to the patients in those centres?

Reflection on these uncertainties further strengthened the argument that with all the developments since our original review, it seemed timely in 2020 to revisit this topic to explore and collate what additional understanding had been gained. While conducting the resulting update, we became aware of some more recent developments. A United Kingdom qualitative systematic review was published in 2021 that explored the impact of research activity by healthcare professionals other than medical professionals [ 38 ], and another UK review published in 2023 focussed on research engagement by allied health professionals (AHPs) [ 39 ]. With few exceptions, the papers specifically on nursing and AHPs in these reviews were typically smaller scale than the papers included in our formal review, and/or usually did not include the quantifiable comparisons that featured in most of our included papers. Nevertheless, these reviews usefully illustrate the growing interest in the contribution of these healthcare professionals in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

In addition, we identified a large-scale study from the United States by Shahian et al. [ 40 ] that was published in 2022 and examined the link between research engagement and improved healthcare performance in 5 major medical fields across 1604 Medicare-participating hospitals. A noticeable facet of the paper by Shahian et al. was their referencing of a large number of papers that we had identified either in our original review, or in the first phase of our updated review [ 40 ].

To ensure our updated review adequately reflected all such developments since May 2020, we conducted a further search in March 2024. The review presented here is based on papers identified in both phases of the updated review, the findings of which are then combined with those from our original review.

Review question

To identify studies, the primary research question used the same approach as Boaz et al. [ 2 , 3 ].

Does research engagement (by clinicians and organizations) improve healthcare performance?

By research engagement, we mean, as in our original review, engagement in research rather than the broader concept of engagement with research, and we are referring to participation in research by healthcare organizations and staff rather than patient participation in trials. Engagement in research is taken to mean, “a deliberate set of intellectual and practical activities undertaken by healthcare staff (including conducting research and playing an active role in the whole research cycle) and organizations (including playing an active role in research networks, partnerships or collaborations)” (p. 2) [ 2 ].

The 2020 decision to complete an update of the previous review [ 2 , 3 ] was informed by a published decision framework for updating systematic reviews [ 41 ]. After completion in 2024 of the comprehensive initial phase of the updated review, including the two searches and considerable subsequent analysis, we recognized, as noted above, that while we had been conducting the review some important further papers had been published. We wanted to incorporate such papers, and so decided to conduct a further search for papers. The design of this final phase (which included a third search) was informed both by the fact that we had already identified a considerable number of papers for the updated review, and by the way new papers in this field were by now much more likely to cite earlier papers, with Shahian et al. [ 40 ] being a prime example. Therefore, we thought it was reasonable to rely to a much greater extent on checking citations to the papers already identified, as explained below.

Search strategy and information sources

Search 1 (update).

The first step in syntax development used the Medline Ovid strategy published by Boaz et al. [ 2 ].

Initial diagnostic testing indicated issues preventing code execution. Due to the syntax comprising several nested terms and Boolean operators, it was rebuilt using recommendations for “single-line” optimization for debugging complex code [ 42 ].

Search 2 (modified)

The syntax for Search 2 was a term modification to capture papers that more explicitly indexed research networks and collaborations. Search 2 necessitated a deeper dive into the full-text content of papers. The decision to search full-text articles reflected observations that the sensitivity of Search 1 was potentially affected by the variable quality (and relevance for our review) of abstracts, a consistent challenge for reviewers [ 43 ]. As a second search also adapted published syntax, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses Literature Search—Extension Checklist (PRISMA-S) reporting protocol was followed [ 44 ]. (The full text for search strategies is provided in “Search Strategy and Syntax Sensitivity”; see Additional file 2 ).

Electronic databases

Nine electronic records collections were used in Search 1: Medline (OVID and EBSCO), EMBASE, PsycInfo (OVID and EBSCO), CINAHL, Web of Science, Health Management and Information Consortium and British Nursing Institute. The mix provided parity with previous reviews and mitigated risk of missed papers by combining general and specialized databases. Different interfaces (e.g. OVID, EBSCO) for the same collection were also included to offset variations due to platform [ 45 ]. Grey literature was not searched: these collections failed to uniquely identify papers in previous reviews on this topic. Search 2 was restricted to the Medline EBSCO Full Text records, which was the collection which yielded the highest hit ratio for relevant papers (see Additional file 2 ).

Other sources

Manual and snowball searching were used in three ways. Firstly, a range of search engines (Google Scholar, PubMed, ProQuest Central, Scopus, the Web of Science Cited Reference Search) were used to track citations for (a) prior reviews as whole papers, (b) the individual studies within these reviews and (c) article reference lists. Secondly, key journals that published studies shortlisted in the previous reviews were hand-checked, including: Implementation Science, PLOS One, BMJ Open and BMC Health Services Research. Thirdly, topic experts suggested papers for consideration.

Search 3 (final phase)

As explained above, we subsequently conducted a further search covering May 2020–March 2024. This consisted of: a hand-search of three of the journals in which papers from the first phase of the updated review had been published (Health Research Policy and Systems, Implementation Science and Medical Care); a check of papers in the two reviews published in this period [ 38 , 39 ]; and a check of citations in this period to all the papers identified both in our original review and in the update’s initial phase.

Eligibility criteria

The following limiters were applied:

Timeframe: 1 January 2012 to 20 March 2024 (inclusive of eprint)

Population: Human (any setting)

Language: English (any country)

Paper type: Academic Journals (scholarly works). Conference papers were admitted as flags for accessible peer-reviewed works (e.g. pre-print) or key teams.

Three criteria were defined, guided by definitions from the original review [ 3 ].

Criterion A: study design

Empirical studies using method/s aligned with health services research, including clinical trials, retrospective cohort and survey methods. Studies with only patient reported outcomes (e.g. satisfaction) were excluded.

Criterion B: healthcare performance

Studies must report an outcome indexing performance assessment for a care process or healthcare improvement. The following were excluded: staff-specific reports alone, (e.g. job satisfaction or morale), policy impacts alone (no flow through to healthcare), descriptions of networks without outcomes data.

Criterion C: research engagement

Explicit demonstration of engagement in research including: agenda-setting, conducting research, participation in action research or in networks where the research involvement is noted. This criterion also allowed engagement implicitly through research network membership, even if a specific study was not recorded, but there was a comparison of healthcare between member and non-member settings. More details about examples that were in scope can be found in Hanney et al. [ 3 , p. 2].

Records management

To efficiently manage the export of the large records for the first two searches, Endnote X9 (Clarivate) was used to combine downloads from different databases and discard software detected duplicates. The endnote library was imported into Rayyan, a free multi-collaborator online screening tool [ 46 ]. Study selection procedures for Searches 1 and 2 followed the same screening/eligibility check sequence.

Screening and eligibility/quality checking

In Rayyan, titles were scanned to exclude papers that were irrelevant, did not meet criteria or were non-exact duplicates. Abstracts of retained records were then screened and classified as “include”, “exclude” or “maybe”. A third screening of “maybe” classifications forced a binary coding of “include” or “exclude”, with comment flags on issues. A final records’ sweep with the Rayyan query function checked for misclassified studies. This four-step screening process was completed by a single reviewer (BG).

Full-text for each provisionally included study was uploaded into Rayyan. The initial eligibility check was completed by three experts who were involved in article screening for Hanney et al. [ 3 ]. As a criterion check and to orient reviewers to the Rayyan platform, a practice phase used 10 randomly sampled records. The abstract was the primary source for expert reviewers, with full-text also available. After the practice task and consensus discussion of criteria, a batch of records (alphabet determined) was assigned to each expert reviewer, to rate each paper as “include”, “exclude” or “maybe” (ratings were unblinded). If the rating pair (i.e. B.G. and an expert from the original review) were both “include”, the paper was progressed to full-text appraisal. If there was disagreement, papers rated as “maybe” were reassigned to another expert reviewer for an opinion, and those rated as “exclude” by an expert reviewer were marked for discard. If consensus for a “maybe” paper could not be reached by discussion, it was progressed to a full text appraisal, conducted by a single reviewer (B.G.) using all available information sources and reviewer ratings.

A final review of all potential “includes” was jointly conducted by team members, including a few papers identified by other sources such as continued manual snowballing from key papers. The study selection procedures for Search 3 mirrored this final step, and so consisted of a review of all potential “includes” conducted jointly by team members.

Study quality was assessed using the mixed-methods appraisal tool (MMAT v2018), on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) [ 47 ]. The MMAT accommodated all designs in the paper set. The majority of the papers have a design which fitted into the MMAT category of quantitative non-randomized. All papers scored good to high quality on the five questions in their relevant MMAT subscale. The lower end of ratings (good) was typically due to lack of information in the article, such as whether and/or how confounding factors may have been identified or managed. Quality ratings were not used to exclude papers, but formed part of the discussion about the quality and contribution of the papers.

Data extraction, coding and ethics

As Rayyan is only a screening platform, a data extraction sheet was created in Excel (v2016) for each included paper. A university research ethics committee deemed the project as not requiring formal ethical approval, due to secondary data mining on anonymized aggregated records.

A large and methodologically diverse mix of papers was identified with a range of different outcomes and outcome measures. The papers were combined through a process of critical interpretive synthesis inspired, as in our original review, by the approach outlined by Dixon-Woods et al. [ 48 ]. This involves adopting an iterative approach to refining the research question, searching the literature and defining and applying codes and categories. It enables the generation and development of theory with strong explanatory power and uses relevance as one measure of quality. Following analysis of the papers in the updated review, we collated the results from the updated review with those from our original review to create one combined set of papers for overall analysis.

Figure  1 summarizes the review literature flow. The two formal searches identified 66 901 records, with 68 further papers coming from other sources, including the March 2024 extension. From these, 168 papers progressed to full-text appraisal, and 62 were identified for inclusion [ 40 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 ].

Flow diagram for literature search

This review updates the previous review conducted by the team [ 2 ]. Table 2 outlines the 95 papers in our combined review: the 62 additional papers in the updated review along with the 33 papers in our original review. The latter 33 papers are shown in italics in Table  2 , which includes details about the study characteristics of all 95 included papers as well as key dimensions of the findings. To complement Table  2 , brief notes on the development and scope of key United States and United Kingdom research networks/organizations discussed in the papers are provided in the “Glossary of the United States of America and United Kingdom Research Organizations and Networks Discussed in the Papers” (see Additional file 1 ).

Study characteristics

Across the 95 papers, 12 countries are either the location for the research engagement described in a single-country study, or the location from which a multi-country study was led, with one paper led from South Africa having authors from a range of African countries (and Yemen) [ 88 ]. The 12 countries are: United States (50 papers), United Kingdom (17), Canada (7), Spain (5), Germany (4), the Netherlands (3), Australia (2), Denmark (2), South Africa (2), China (1), Finland (1) and Sweden (1).

Cancer was the most common field, with 32/95 papers overall. Next came hospital care in general/multi-field/acute care with 16 papers, cardiovascular/stroke (12), substance use disorder (7), dentistry (3), mental health/psychiatry (3) and obstetrics (3).

Main findings

As presented in Table  2 , the key findings from the combined review are presented in terms of the four pairs of binary options, though inevitably some papers did not neatly fit into one category. The first categorization is in terms of the level of analysis explored in different papers; 23 papers compare clinicians, but 72 compare organizations. There is an even higher proportion in the updated review at the organizational level (50/62, 81%) than in our original review (22/33, 67%).

A total of 86 of the 95 papers report positive results, of which 70 are purely positive and 16 are positive/mixed meaning that there are some key negative elements in their findings, that is, important parts of the analysis where a lack of healthcare improvement is identified. Nine papers are negative, of which four are negative-mixed.

The final two pairs of binary options consider just the 86 positive papers. In total, 37/86 report improved health outcomes in terms of reduced mortality or morbidity. A higher proportion of the positive papers in the updated review (30/58, 52%) than in our original review (7/28, 25%) describe such improved health outcomes. There is a corresponding reduction from three quarters (21/28) to a half (28/58) in the proportion of papers solely describing improved processes in terms such as applying proven interventions.

Finally, in terms of the type of impact, 55/86 of the papers describe research engagement leading to a broader impact on healthcare performance. Broad impacts arise when the improved healthcare goes more widely than just being linked to clinicians or healthcare organizations implementing the findings, or processes, from their own research more rapidly/extensively than do others. When the improved healthcare is linked to the results or processes of their own research, that is categorized as specific impact, which is the case in 31/86 papers. Using these various categories, Fig.  2 outlines the findings from the combined review, alongside the findings from our original review, and the updated review. This highlights various trends in terms of the main findings.

Results from Boaz et al. systematic reviews of whether research engagement by health organizations and staff improves healthcare: analysis of original; updated; and combined reviews (and of the 86 positive papers). Green rows (top): original review; Brown rows (middle): updated review; blue rows (bottom): combined review

One further trend in terms of the type of analysis is seen in the 11/95 papers that used bibliometric analysis as an indicator of the extent, and/or quality, of research engagement compared with some measure of the healthcare performance, in terms of processes and/or outcomes [ 30 , 40 , 50 , 51 , 56 , 65 , 76 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 100 ]; 10 of these papers are in the updated review, with just 1 [ 30 ] from our original review. All these 11 papers are positive, but various types of bibliometric analysis are used. The broad categories of academic indicators applied include publication volume [ 95 , 96 ], publication “quality” (for example, as measured by citations) [ 51 ] and a combination of volume and “quality” [ 30 , 40 , 50 , 56 , 65 , 76 , 97 , 100 ]. Of the latter, five relatively small studies suggest that the association with “quality” was stronger than with volume. The bibliometric studies also illustrate the varying levels of analysis at which the included studies in the review are conducted; 4 of the 11 papers compare the academic outputs of clinicians [ 50 , 56 , 96 , 97 ] and 7 make comparisons at an organizational level [ 30 , 40 , 51 , 65 , 76 , 95 , 100 ], focussing variously on academic outputs at ward, department or hospital/trust level.

The combined review allows for a range of issues to be analysed more thoroughly than they had been in our original review. These include issues highlighted in the background such as the role of networks and the “dose effect”. These are examined in turn below, followed by consideration of how far the included studies have addressed various aspects of health equity, and finally an analysis of lessons from the overall portfolio of positive and negative studies.

The role of research networks

The full significance of papers on research networks is seen in the combined review. Using the inclusive definition developed by Laliberte et al. [ 24 ], we have applied the term to various arrangements that, however loosely, give some measure of commonality to the research of multiple healthcare organizations that not only enhance science production, but also share a concern to transfer research findings into clinical practice. About half the papers in the combined review analysed research activity by clinicians or healthcare organizations who were part of research networks of various types.

In the United States, the NCI cancer research networks include the NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centres, the NCI Cooperative Groups and collaborative groups of community hospitals affiliated to the NCI’s CCOP- see the Glossary for its new name. In various ways these networks all include outreach and the engagement of community physicians in their brief; see the Glossary for more details. Their potential was recognized early in the 2005 study by Laliberte et al. [ 24 ] that looked at these networks and concluded that network membership may influence compliance with treatment guidelines, and should therefore be taken into account in predictive models of compliance.

Seven included papers illustrated various aspects of this issue by comparing the processes and outcomes for patients treated at NCI-designated (comprehensive) cancer centres with those treated elsewhere, six of these studies showed better outcomes for patients treated at NCI centres [ 52 , 64 , 80 , 84 , 86 , 106 ], while one paper suggested that despite better processes, patient outcomes were worse at NCI centres. This paper is considered in the section on negative papers below [ 81 ]. Of the positive papers, Paulson et al. showed how the NCI designation was “associated with lower risk of postoperative death and improved long-term survival” (p. 675) [ 86 ], identified possible factors such as better adherence to guidelines, and demonstrated that the better outcomes at NCI-designated centres remained even when compared with non-NCI designated centres with a similar high volume of cases [ 86 ]. Wolfson et al. identified the requirements that underpin the positive association between high-quality research and high-quality care [ 106 ]. These included the mandate NCI centres have to “lead clinical trials, exchange ideas, disseminate findings” (p. 3892), which showed how the centres could act as part of a network. Wolfson et al. continued: “The NCI operates on the belief that a culture of discovery, scientific excellence, transdisciplinary research, and collaboration yields tangible benefits extending far beyond the generation of new knowledge” [ 106 ].

Building on Laliberte et al. [ 24 ], Carpenter et al. demonstrated an association between CCOP membership and accelerated innovation adoption but added the important codicil that it was not possible to “definitively ascertain whether there is a direct causal relationship between the two” [ 54 ].

Improved healthcare has also been associated with membership of the United States practice-based research networks (PBRNs). These networks cover family practice/primary care, dentistry, mental health and substance abuse. Like the CCOP and its affiliates, PBRNs involve practising clinicians in the community who conduct research. The combined review includes seven PBRN papers covering primary care and dentistry, all of which are positive [ 32 , 36 , 66 , 78 , 83 , 92 , 108 ] and one of which describes an international dental PBRN led from the United States that includes three Scandinavian countries [ 66 ].

A total of seven papers from another PBRN, the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Clinical Trials Network (CTN), also provided evidence of accelerated translation, identified mechanisms through which this might work, and discussed the theoretical frameworks within which those operated [ 5 , 14 , 23 , 49 , 63 , 90 , 91 ]. Thus, Ducharme et al. [ 14 ] and Knudsen et al. [ 23 ] explored Rogers’ notion of the “trialability” [ 110 ] of innovations, that is, how far an innovation may be experimented with on just a limited basis, and Abraham et al. [ 5 ] discussed the role of absorptive capacity [ 111 , 112 ], which they summarized as an organization’s ability to assess and use information [ 5 ]. Rieckmann et al. noted that although the mechanisms involved were not fully understood they appeared “to be influenced by core experiences from network participation” (p. 894) [ 91 ], and Fields et al. [ 63 ] used insights from implementation science to explore the influence of a set of organizational characteristics (including network membership) on innovation adoption [ 113 ].

In an analysis of data on 12 993 transplants conducted in 162 US centres, the 32 centres in the Bone Marrow Transplant trials network were found to have significantly better survival rates than others [ 77 ]. Marmor et al. reported that there was not an association between procedure volume and survival. Rather, they suggested, the better outcomes for those treated in centres in this network could be linked to the nature of trials that required “higher levels of national clinical collaboration and standardization of protocols”, and such collaboration was “likely to generate higher levels of innovation and excellence among clinical colleagues” (p. 92) [ 77 ].

In Germany, one team produced three papers on the improved healthcare performance of hospitals that were part of clinical trials organizations [ 13 , 34 , 94 ]. Two papers described the improved outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer if they were treated in a hospital that belonged to one of two German ovarian cancer clinical trials organizations, in effect research networks [ 13 , 34 ]. They noted that the improved outcomes were not related to patient volume, suggesting instead that possible factors may include hospitals’ participation in the study group’s quality assurance programs and team members attending regular and scientific and educational meetings [ 13 ]. In a follow-up study, the data were analysed in more detail using mediation analysis that showed not just that the research participation of a hospital contributed to superior patient survival, but also began to unpick how it happened, including through better use of surgery and chemotherapy [ 94 ].

Downing et al. noted that, following the 2006 establishment of the NIHR in the United Kingdom, the increase in research activity in networks throughout the English NHS also increased the scope for analysing the benefits of research engagement [ 58 ]. The role of NIHR networks in boosting research engagement, which is then linked to improved healthcare, also covers clinicians such as nurses and AHPs who had traditionally had limited research opportunities. Studies are now showing how they can play an important role by engaging in research because, according to Trusson et al. reporting on a research network for nurses and AHPs, people working in such roles “have opportunities to explore possible solutions to issues that they encounter in their clinical role through academic study” (p. 1) [ 101 ]. Such opportunities can also enhance their clinical skills. More broadly, Downing et al. claimed that, in relation to the NIHR’s clinical trials network, “this natural experiment, presented by the rapid expansion of trial activity across a whole national health system, is perhaps the best opportunity to address the subject though outcomes research” (p. 95) [ 58 ]. This development is discussed in the next section.

The “dose effect” of the extent of research engagement

Evidence indicating a link between the extent of research engagement and the degree of improved healthcare has been accumulating for some time. In the United States, the 1996 study by Brown and Griffiss found that the average acute length of stay (LoS) in Department of Veteran Affairs hospitals was inversely related to the size of research programmes [ 53 ]. Majumdar et al. [ 26 ] used a tertile approach to show that in-hospital mortality decreased as the rate of trial participation increased in the area of unstable angina. In the substance abuse field, early CTN studies also contributed: thus Knudsen et al. [ 23 ] noted that the adoption of buprenorphine therapy by practitioners within the trials’ network was much greater in those programmes in the network that participated in the specific buprenorphine trial than those that had not. In a 2006 study of a sexual health trial in Australia, Morton et al. [ 28 ] identified improved post-trial clinical practice by high-recruiting clinicians, but not by low-recruiting ones.

In our combined set of papers the first use of the specific term “dose effect” to describe the effects of differing amounts of research engagement occurred in Downing et al., who tested the hypothesis that for colorectal cancer (CRC) “high, sustained hospital-level participation in interventional clinical trials improves outcomes for all patients with CRC managed in those research-intensive hospitals” (p. 89) [ 58 ]. They found that high participation in such clinical trials was independently associated with better outcomes and that these effects were not restricted to academic centres or large institutions but were seen across all the NHS Trusts that conducted research on and treated patients with colorectal cancer. They extended their analysis to look at the effects of different levels of research participation and found that the highest levels of participation led to the highest levels of improved outcomes. However, in relation to these findings, Downing et al. were careful to say that, in the absence of the possibility of an RCT, caution was needed if attempting “to infer a causal contribution” (p. 89) from participation in research activity to improved healthcare [ 58 ].

Other United Kingdom database studies support the findings of Downing et al. For example, Ozdemir et al. [ 85 ] compared mortality with research funding per hospital bed in hospitals with high, medium and low levels of research funding and showed that not only was mortality lower in high-funded research hospitals than in other hospitals, but also, on average, hospitals in the middle category had a lower mortality rate than ones with the least research funding. In two studies using NIHR research study activity data from different years, Jonker and Fisher [ 68 , 69 ] showed an inverse correlation between the number of clinical trials/patient participation levels in United Kingdom hospitals and the mortality rate. Lin et al. [ 73 ] used retrospective data to examine the survival rate of the 465 patients (recruited by 60 hospitals) who had participated in an RCT in the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN). While they identified a significant association between low trial recruitment and lower survival rates, looking at the volume of patients treated in the disease area by the respective hospitals they report that “no significance was found between hospital throughput and outcomes” (p. 40) [ 73 ].

Further support for the “dose effect” concept comes from the United States and elsewhere. According to Abraham et al., in the substance abuse field “treatment programs participating in a greater number of CTN protocols had significantly higher levels of treatment quality, an association that held after controlling for key organizational characteristics” (p. 232) [ 49 ]. Similarly, Gilbert et al. [ 66 ] reported that members of a dental PBRN who fully participated in the network were more likely to move evidence-based care into everyday practice than members who only partially participated. Seaburg et al. [ 96 ] showed an association between the quantity of resident physicians’ publications and their clinical performance scores during training, and García-Romero et al. claimed that increases in the scientific output of Spanish hospitals made a significant contribution to a reduction of hospital LoS [ 65 ].

In Canada, Tsang et al. [ 103 ] conducted a pre-planned observational study nested within a clinical trial to test how well traditionally non-research active community hospitals could participate in an RCT alongside the traditional RCT sites in academic hospitals. However, while that aspect of the study did show that, in terms of adherence to trial metrics, the community hospitals could successfully participate in studies, outcomes for patients in the trial were significantly better in the traditional research hospitals, although the full reasons for this will need further exploration [ 103 ].

• Health equity

Various aspects of health equity are considered in the included papers, and some of these report attempts to improve health equity. Some population groups are particularly vulnerable. In the United States, for example, Wolfson et al. listed the following groups: “underrepresented minorities, those with low socio-economic status (SES), those with public or no insurance, and those with a significant distance to care” (p. 3886) [ 106 ]. On the basis of its long-held assumption that patient access to research active healthcare providers is beneficial, the NCI has attempted to reduce geographic inequalities in access. In a 1995 paper, Warneke et al. noted that the CCOP was established by the NCI in 1983 with the deliberate intention of spreading the benefits of the clinical research conducted in NCI centres: “The program was designed with the assumption that by participating as equals in the research process, community physicians would be more likely to accept and implement the results in their practices with non-protocol patients” (p. 336) [ 37 ].

Similar moves to encourage wider participation in clinical trials have recently been made in Canada in the nested study described above [ 103 ]. A recent analysis showing higher levels of research activity within the English healthcare system were associated with lower mortality, noted that although the NIHR CRN was established to promote research participation across England, there was still some way to go to ensure greater geographical equity [ 69 ].

Other initiatives, such as the United States minority-based CCOPs described in the Glossary, addressed racial inequalities in relation to access to research engagement and timely evidence-based healthcare. These sometimes overlap with geographic inequalities. Some of the papers on the NCI-designated cancer centres observed with concern that the proportion of certain racial/ethnic groups, including African Americans, who received treatment at these centres compared with non-NCI centres, was lower than for other racial groups [ 64 , 80 , 106 ]. Having noted that African Americans with colon cancer experienced worse outcomes than Caucasian Americans, and suggested that this was partly due to differential treatment, a study by Penn et al. found evidence that African Americans receiving treatment from CCOP providers had benefitted from a seemingly deliberate attempt to boost early access to a recently recommended innovative treatment [ 87 ]. In Australia, Young et al. [ 109 ] reported that the health services, and health research system, of the Aboriginal community work together to try to ensure health research is embedded into activities that improve health, and described a specific example in relation to ear, nose and throat surgery and speech-language pathology services.

Lessons from the overall collection of studies: positive and negative

A wide variety of papers contribute to the combined review’s overall finding that the included studies are overwhelmingly positive. As the section on the “dose effect” illustrates, throughout the time covered by the combined review, individual papers have contributed to a wider understanding that goes beyond specific issues about research networks. Many papers contribute to the analysis of both the strength of the association between research engagement and improved healthcare, and the mechanisms involved. For example, a 2019 US positive study by Fanaroff et al. [ 60 ] identified improved care and outcomes for patients with acute myocardial infarction who were treated at research active hospitals, even after accounting for potential confounders. The authors encapsulated some of the key thinking on research engagement with their conclusion that participation in clinical trials by hospitals “may be emblematic of a culture that embraces novel therapeutics, engages both clinicians and patients, and incentivizes continuous improvement in care” (p. 191) [ 60 ].

While overall the 95 studies included in the combined review are positive, about 10% are categorized as negative. These nine negative papers also provide important insights [ 7 , 11 , 15 , 20 , 25 , 67 , 79 , 81 , 99 ]. For example, existing widespread use of one proven intervention prior to a company-sponsored clinical trial exploring physicians’ adherence to international treatment recommendations meant that the trial had no significant impact on that adherence, although it did increase use of the trial sponsor’s drug [ 7 ]; physicians adopted another trial intervention before it was proven one way or another [ 11 ]; more positively, a unique policy and regulatory environment governing the adoption of another intervention ensured that all hospitals benefitted, not just those in the trial [ 79 ]. Two teams with negative results later conducted further, more comprehensive studies with positive conclusions [ 25 , 26 , 67 , 68 , 69 ]. Six of the seven papers examining whether NCI-designated cancer centres provided patients with better healthcare processes and outcomes are positive [ 52 , 64 , 80 , 84 , 86 , 106 ]. However, one paper suggested that outcomes were worse in these accredited hospitals despite the better healthcare and, in seeking to explain this, drew attention to the factors considered in the accreditation processes used by different organizations and how far they accurately captured the most relevant data [ 81 ].

Our original review set out to find whether there was empirical evidence that supported the often-held assumption that engagement by clinicians and healthcare organizations in research improves healthcare performance at various levels. It concluded that there was some positive evidence but that systematic analysis of the data related to this engagement was in its infancy [ 2 ]. The 62 papers in the updated review, 58 of which are positive, provide further empirical evidence to support the positive conclusions of the original review.

When the papers from both reviews are considered together, they provide a more complete dataset than previously available [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ], and an updated picture of this literature in which the trends identified in our initial analyses [ 3 ] become more apparent. With more than a third of the papers in the combined review (32/95) focussing on aspects of cancer, this is the field overall in which there is the most comprehensive analysis of the link between research engagement and improved healthcare. While the individual cancer papers differ in the strength of the association identified, and most of the papers focus one or other of the main cancer sites, many of the cancer papers analyse the role of research networks – one of the main mechanisms through which it is claimed research engagement improves healthcare.

The combined review reflects policy shifts and organizational changes that occurred first in the United States and later in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and were designed to address the time lag between the production of research and its use in practice. These include the development of research networks and their associated databases over several decades (accompanied by an improved understanding of their strengths and limitations [ 54 , 64 , 77 , 106 , 108 ]) and efforts to strengthen links between academic centres and community services [ 61 , 87 ]. More recent developments, especially in the United Kingdom, encouraged further deliberate attempts to identify and explore the impacts of research engagement. Research teams were, for example, better able to study the real-world impacts of system-level mechanisms such as research networks as they became more formalized and embedded in national health and science structures [ 58 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 85 , 93 , 101 ].

Across the board, within and beyond networks, there is also further evidence about the mechanisms by which research engagement might improve healthcare, including the ones identified in our original review. The role of strong evidence-based protocols developed for RCTs, but contributing to improved healthcare more widely in research active healthcare sites, was highlighted in various studies [ 77 , 98 , 105 ]. Papers also identified the importance of providing evidence-based/guideline consistent care, which could also be linked to a culture of discovery, excellence and collaboration [ 40 , 60 , 62 , 64 , 77 , 84 , 86 , 87 , 106 ]. There were also more nuanced mechanisms at the speciality and clinician levels, such as the use of multi-disciplinary coordination of care in radiation therapy treatment [ 107 ] and practitioner skill development in substance abuse work [ 90 ]. Similar practitioner skill development was also reported among nurses and AHPs, including in the wider literature [ 31 , 38 , 39 , 62 , 70 , 101 ].

In the combined review it also became easier to see connections across this diverse literature. It was possible to identify research teams that had worked together on multiple studies and to explore the extent of cross referencing. In the United States, for example, the CTN of the drug abuse institute had been created to emulate the CCOP, and a centre was established to assess the CTN’s impact [ 114 ]. Analysis of this research network highlighted its role both in conducting research that was relevant to the “real-world” needs of clinical settings, and in enhancing evidence-adoption by healthcare organizations and staff [ 114 ]. Many of the papers from this substance abuse CTN [ 23 , 49 , 90 ] referenced each other and also cross-referenced key cancer papers [ 8 , 24 , 54 ], and there was common use of the same early sources [ 110 , 112 , 115 , 116 ]. These interactions prompted ongoing methodological development, strengthened understanding of theoretical concepts, and supported shared learning across the specialities. Additionally, themes that had been recognized in the original review, including concepts such as absorptive capacity [ 5 , 111 ], were further explored and tested in new contexts, even if the same literature was not always drawn upon [ 40 , 65 ].

In the combined review, the nature and strength of the association found between research engagement and improved health varies enormously among the 86 positive papers, even among those that describe the role of research networks. One approach that begins to identify where evidence might be strongest was noted in the original review as being the important concept of the “dose effect”, even if it was not specifically labelled as such [ 26 ]. However, the combined review can now more fully consider the concept because evidence about this greatly increased as the scope of the papers included has increased. There are many more studies where all the clinicians or organizations compared are engaged in research but to varying extents and/or with different levels of resources, for example within a trial [ 28 , 50 , 59 , 73 , 93 , 103 , 107 ] or within a network [ 23 , 33 , 49 , 51 , 66 , 68 , 69 , 85 , 95 ]. The inclusion of papers regarding differences within trials, and the emergence of the importance of the “dose effect”, have implications for both (a) how the issue of research engagement is analysed and (b) how far efforts to enhance research engagement should be concentrated or spread widely across a system.

In relation to the first of these issues, when considering how research engagement is analysed, the key question morphs somewhat: it is no longer simply whether research engagement improves healthcare performance compared with no research engagement, rather, it is whether a larger amount of research engagement improves healthcare performance by more than a smaller level of engagement (and, if so, by how much). Answers to these questions could then feed back to strengthen the evidence for a positive association between research engagement and improved healthcare performance.

In relation to the second question, about the concentration or wide distribution of research funding, analyses might have to consider the context and trade-offs in terms of benefits for improved health and health equity. The widespread distribution of research funding across the health system could maximize the number of patients who might benefit, but a more concentrated approach, with a higher dose of research engagement in a smaller number of hospitals, could maximize the benefit for patients in such centres.

Research infrastructures in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have been developed to enhance the relationship between health and health research systems, and the evidence from our combined review suggests that these changes have been positive. In both systems, but particularly in the United Kingdom, there have been deliberate attempts to fund major centres of research in leading healthcare facilities, as well as to spread research funding more widely to healthcare organizations across the country, but this impetus needs to be maintained if the full benefits of research engagement are to be realized.

Such an argument is reinforced by the conclusions of a major recent analysis of progress in the United Kingdom in engaging healthcare staff in research and building research capacity. The findings from the study suggest that many healthcare staff in the United Kingdom are interested in being involved in research, there are supportive national policies and strategies in place and there has been some important progress. However, achieving widespread involvement “will only be possible by focusing more on how healthcare organizations embed and support research activity through organizational policies which are supported by the wider research support and funding infrastructure. This is an essential part of a system-based approach to developing and supporting research engagement” (p. 356) [ 117 ]. The progress possible, and the potential benefits of trying to build a health research system embedded into a healthcare system, but also the full range of substantial challenges, have also recently been explored in a hospital and regional healthcare system in northern Queensland, Australia [ 118 , 119 ]. Studies such as these indicate that this combined review could provide timely evidence to further the challenging task of improving healthcare by boosting engagement in health research.

Strengths and limitations

The combined review contains a considerable number of papers from diverse perspectives, but the literature is drawn predominantly from the United States and the Global North, thus the conclusions may not be appropriate in different contexts, including in the Global South. This, perhaps, partly reflects the inclusion criteria of papers in English only. While the increasing use of bibliometrics as an indicator of research engagement has widened the range of positive studies available, differing claims as to the most appropriate measure of research publications challenge consistent interpretation of the data and indicate there is more work to do. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the national policy, noted in one paper, of attaching promotion and bonuses for clinicians to publish in journals with an impact factor of at least three [ 97 ] runs contrary to the internationally widely endorsed Declaration on Research Assessment [ 120 ].

The complexity of this literature (with many generic terms such as “research” and “engagement”), and the tangential approach of some papers to the broad question of whether research engagement improves performance, posed considerable challenges. It helped enormously that this time around, we were able to build on our experience in the original review. We adopted a somewhat more extensive approach to the formal search in the updated review, and we identified some papers that we had missed in the original review. We were aided by the generally greater clarity in later papers. We are now able, therefore, to present a more nuanced understanding of this field, building on our experience in the original review. In particular, we have found considerably more evidence on two topics identified as important in our original review, and on their implications for health equity: the role of research networks and consideration of how far there is a dose effect with regard to the degrees of research engagement. On both topics the combined review has strong papers showing important healthcare improvements even after considering potential confounders such as patient volume [ 8 , 13 , 26 , 40 , 58 , 73 , 77 , 84 , 85 , 86 ]. However, the failure of some papers to address such confounders [ 59 , 107 ] means some weaknesses in the overall analysis remain, and we are still not able to undertake any meta-analysis as the included literature remains very diverse.

We have now included a significant range of largely positive papers in the combined review. However, lack of resources meant we were not able to replicate our original review’s [ 2 , 3 ] structured analysis of the wider range of papers identified as making many relevant and illuminating points related to the topic, but not meeting the review’s inclusion criteria. For example, while the combined review does include some consideration of health equity issues, there were papers taken to full paper review that were not in the end included but which provide considerably more evidence [ 121 , 122 ].

Future possible work

The system-based approaches for expanding the amount of research in healthcare systems that are mentioned above continue to provide important opportunities for further work on exploring the relationship between research engagement and improved healthcare, including the implications for health equity. Likewise, improvements in the identification and collection of relevant data and developments in statistics have prompted increasingly sophisticated analyses, sometimes using approaches developed in other fields, and could continue to do so [ 65 , 90 , 94 ]. There has also been increasingly sophisticated use of bibliometrics, and there are likely to be continuing opportunities to apply such approaches to more countries. However, the warning from Downing et al. that caution is needed if attempting “to infer a causal contribution” from research participation to improved health outcomes [ 58 ], as well as frequent mention of similar disclaimers in other papers [ 8 , 40 , 54 , 59 , 69 , 74 ], is a reminder that more work is needed.

While some of our papers have claimed that the costs of research engagement are broadly covered by the associated reduced LoS [ 53 , 65 ], further research might be useful around the costs associated with research engagement and how these relate to reported benefits. Such studies could add to the existing large-scale studies showing the considerable monetary value of the health and economic gains resulting from health research [ 123 ].

The insights revealed by the negative papers, particularly in relation to the contexts in which research and research networks operate [ 99 ], could usefully be further explored. Merkow et al. [ 81 ], the one negative paper out of seven papers included on the NCI-designated centres, raises issues about the accuracy, or perhaps appropriateness, of the measurement used by various organizations to accredit cancer centres. These issues have also been explored by various teams [ 122 , 124 , 125 ] but could perhaps be worth further examination because the findings from Merkow et al. are so starkly different from those of other papers included in our review.

Finally, there are increasing opportunities, as well as a growing need, to address the limitations identified above (and also noted in the review by Chalmers et al. [ 39 ]) and go beyond the formal inclusion criteria of this review. A major area that could usefully be incorporated into an overall analysis of the field relates to the impact of the growing interest in research engagement strategies [ 126 ]. This includes the efforts to enhance research roles for healthcare professionals other than medical professionals [ 38 ], and the increasing number of organizational arrangements within health and health research systems for partnerships that seek to boost the production and use of relevant evidence [ 127 , 128 ].

Previous reviews [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] have investigated the association between research engagement and improvements in healthcare performance. This study updates and extends the most comprehensive of these reviews [ 2 , 3 ], and combines its findings with those from that original review to produce a more substantial pool of studies, which are largely positive in terms of the impact of research engagement on processes of care and patient outcomes. Of potential mechanisms, the combined review highlights the important role played by research networks and further identifies the various ways the research engagement facilitated by them operates to improve healthcare. The review also draws together a set of papers which consider how far there is a research engagement “dose effect”. Given the difficulty of conducting randomized controlled trials of large-scale research engagement initiatives, studies of the dose effect offer another approach to understanding the potential contribution and complexities of research engagement, including the implications for health equity. This review provides further evidence of the important contribution played by systems-level research investments such as research networks on processes of care and patient outcomes.

Availability of data and materials

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

Allied health professionals

Clinical research network

Clinical trials network

Community Clinical Oncology Program

Length of stay

Mixed-methods appraisal tool

National Cancer Institute

National Health Service

National Institute for Health (and Care) Research

Practice-based research network

Research and development

Randomized controlled trials

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Teresa Jones for her expert advice on the search strategy. The review was completed as partial fulfilment of Belinda Goodenough’s Masters dissertation at King’s College London. In the original full report for our first review [ 3 ], we gratefully acknowledged the valuable help we had received from our expert advisory group. The members included two patient representatives who were consulted at various stages throughout the project, especially around the necessity of having our systematic review focus on the complexities of benefits from research engagement by healthcare organizations and staff, while separate reviews and analyses focussed on the benefits of PPI in health research.

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Boaz, A., Goodenough, B., Hanney, S. et al. If health organisations and staff engage in research, does healthcare improve? Strengthening the evidence base through systematic reviews. Health Res Policy Sys 22 , 113 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01187-7

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Aortic aneurysm is a life-threatening disease characterized by permanent localized dilation of the aorta (a diameter 50% greater than an adjacent normal aortic segment), resulting in catastrophic aortic rupture and sudden death. Currently, endovascular stenting and open surgery are the mainstays of treatment for aortic aneurysm, and no medication has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to induce regression or slow aneurysm growth and restrain the risk of rupture. Clarifying the potential molecular mechanisms and identifying novel and efficient therapeutic targets are therefore of great importance. This Research Topic aims to deepen our understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying aortic aneurysmal diseases. By integrating single-cell RNA sequencing, Spatial Transcriptomics, lineage tracing, and cellular/molecular biology, we seek to uncover fundamental processes by which genetic and acquired factors induce or exacerbate aortic aneurysmal diseases. The insights gained from this field could lead to novel therapeutic strategies, offering new avenues for the prevention, recognition and treatment of aortic aneurysmal diseases. This Research Topic focuses on the recent advances, detailed experimental protocols, challenges, and application prospects in this area. We would particularly encourage submissions that take new omics approaches to uncover novel mechanisms of aneurysmal diseases. We welcome basic research, clinical studies, and reviews. Authors may submit various article types, including Original Research, Brief Research Reports, Reviews, Mini-Reviews, and Systematic Reviews.

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How to Use a Grazing Stick

Additional author: Justin Burt, postdoctoral research associate, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, University of Georgia Tifton Campus.

Grazing management requires accurate estimates of forage availability to adjust forage supply to meet animal needs. However, incorrect forage availability estimates can negatively impact important grazing-management decisions such as stocking rate and grazing time. Visually estimating pasture yield is inexpensive and fast, but untrained persons can give biased and unreliable estimates.

One of the easiest, most affordable, and most reliable estimation options is using a grazing stick or pasture ruler. If you do not have a grazing stick or pasture ruler, you can use any ruler or yard stick for measurement. This publication provides step-by-step instructions on how to use a grazing stick to make important forage-management decisions.

• Walk across the pasture in a diagonal or zigzag (Z-shaped) pattern, taking a height measurement every 10–20 steps.
• Place the grazing stick upright at the bottom of the plant canopy (Figures 1A and 1B), but do not press down on the forage.
• Place your hand against the stick where the average height of the plant canopy and markings on the stick meet (Figure 1C).
• Write down the number and repeat these steps across multiple locations in the field (Figure 1D). You should expect to collect a minimum of 15–20 data points per field.

Mistakes to Avoid When Measuring Forage with the Grazing Stick

To minimize measurement errors or bias, be sure to take forage height measurements at consistent spacing throughout the pasture (such as every 20 steps) to avoid selecting only the tall spots (especially near excreta), areas just inside a gateway, or near fence lines. Ensure that the grazing stick is perpendicular to the soil surface.

To ensure an accurate forage measurement, do not take measurements as shown in Figures 2A and 2B: Avoid pulling back on the grazing stick (Figure 2A), and do not compress the taller portions of the forage canopy down to the shorter portions (Figure 2B).

If there is variability in the canopy height, be sure to take measurements from both the taller and shorter areas, and then adjust for the percent coverage of each component. In mature forage stands, in which lodging may occur, straighten the plants up to get an accurate reading, but do not pull and stretch the plants to their full height as this will cause errors.

How to Predict Available Forage Mass

Available forage mass is calculated using Equation 1. First, determine the average beginning harvest height by adding all the forage height measurements together and dividing that by the number of measurements collected.

Next, determine the optimum final grazing height. Table 1 lists the optimum final grazing height for different forage species. Subtract the final height from the beginning height to determine the inches of available forage. The final step is to determine the pounds of available forage per acre; use Table 2 to find the available forage per inch per acre based on the forage species.

The ranges in available forage in Table 2 account for the density of the stand. If the stand is fairly open, meaning you can see the soil through the grass (50% to 70% ground coverage), then use the lower end of the range; if the ground coverage is dense (exceeding 90%), then use the higher end of the range. Once the pounds of available forage per inch per acre has been determined, multiply this number by the number of inches to get the pounds of available forage per acre.

Available forage per acre = (beginning height–final height) x (lb of grazeable forage per inch per acre)

Let’s say we have a bermudagrass stand with an average beginning grazing height of approximately 8 in. and a final grazing height of 3 in. Bermudagrass has an average of 260 lb of forage per inch per acre, but it can range from 150 to 500 lb. Using Equation 1, we get:

available forage/acre = (8 in–3 in) * (260 lb of forage/inch/acre)

available forage/acre = 1300 lb of available forage per acre

How Many Days Will it Take to Graze This Pasture

To determine the number of days of grazing, use Equation 2. First, define the forage utilization, which is the percent of available forage that the animals are expected to consume. As intensity of the grazing rotation increases, so will grazing utilization (see Table 3).

Next, define dry-matter intake, which is determined by many factors including the class of livestock and their body weights. In general, we expect animals to consume 2% to 4% of their body weight daily. Table 4 lists livestock classifications and their estimated dry-matter intakes. Multiply the available forage per acre by the number of acres and the percent utilization to determine the numerator in Equation 2. The denominator of Equation 2 is determined by multiplying the animals’ weights by their percent intake and the number of animals. Finally, divide the numerator by the denominator in Equation 2 to get the days of grazing per paddock.

grazing days = available forage per acre × number of acres × % utilization animal weight × animal % intake × number of animals

Let’s assume we have 35 dry beef cows that weigh 1,100 lb on average. Each day, these cows consume 2% of their body weight, and they are rotationally grazing a 20-acre bermudagrass pasture with 1300 lb of available forage/acre. The estimated percent utilization in the rotational system is 60%.

days of grazing = 1300  lb of forage per acre × 20  acres × 0.60  utilization 1100  lb × 0.02  intake × 35  cows

days of grazing = 15600 770

days of grazing = 20 days

How Much Area Do I Need to Feed My Cows for a Set Number of Days

Calculate your forage-area needs using Equation 3. First determine the number of acres required by multiplying the average animal weight by the percent intake, number of animals, and days of grazing. Then divide this number by the product of available forage and percent utilization.

number of acres required = average animal weight × % dry matter intake × days of grazing available forage × % utilization × number of animals

Let’s assume we have 35 dry beef cows that weigh 1,100 lb on average, these cows consume 2% of their body weight, have a 60% utilization, and are grazing for 7 days. There is also 4000 lb of available forage. How many acres are required to maintain these cows for 7 days?

number of acres required = 1100  lb × 0.02   intake × 7   days 1300  lb of available forage × 0.60   utilization × 35   cows

number of acres required = 154 780 × 35   cows

number of acres required = 6.9 acres

A grazing stick provides producers with a cost-effective and relatively accurate option to make critical grazing-management decisions for their operations. It is important for producers to know what their production goals are by taking into consideration the forage type being utilized, the class of animal, and which grazing management strategy they are implementing. Using this key information and a few simple forage height measurements, these calculations can provide producers with an effective grazing plan.

The calculations in this publication are an important aspect of building a grazing plan. This video from the Georgia Forages YouTube channel further demonstrates how to properly use a grazing stick and how to perform these calculations.

For more information or assistance in using a grazing stick in your production system, contact your local Extension office (or call 1-800-ASK-UGA-1).

Status and Revision History In Review on Aug 09, 2024 Published on Aug 20, 2024

Have a question?

Related publications.

• Understanding Stocking Rate in Pasture Systems (B 1568)
• Annual Ryegrass Control in Georgia Hayfields (C 1078)
• Unless You Test, It’s Just a Guess: How to Take, Interpret, and Utilize a Forage Sample (C 1287)

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Mrna vaccine technology wins 2023 nobel prize, highlighting importance of rna research.

On Monday, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their contributions to the field of mRNA vaccines – pioneering work that underscores the increasingly popular field of RNA research.

Their work focused on discovery of the nucleoside base modifications that enabled the unprecedented development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. This prestigious recognition highlights the transformative potential impact of RNA biology, an emerging application area that Oxford Nanopore is uniquely positioned to help advance.

With nanopore sequencing, scientists can analyse native RNA of any fragment length - including full length isoforms - and electronically analyse RNA modifications ‘at the source’.

It has been exciting to see many scientists investigate the biological implications of this feature. For instance, BASE researchers at the University of Queensland are using nanopore sequencing to optimise vaccine performance, and to reduce the time needed to measure mRNA vaccine quality attributes. Oxford Nanopore takes great pride in its unmatched position at the forefront of this rapidly developing industry.

Gordon Sanghera, CEO, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, commented: “Congratulations to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their remarkable achievement in advancing the field of mRNA vaccines. As we look to the future of vaccine development, RNA modification is an area of exciting potential and one the Oxford Nanopore scientific community is increasingly focused on. With the only technology currently available to accurately read native, full-length RNA, Oxford Nanopore is proud to be in a position to support research and development in this fast-moving space, helping unleash new potential for RNA-based therapies and vaccines.”

Libby Snell, Principal Scientist, Sample Technology, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, commented: “It is wonderful to see that the work of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman on RNA modifications has been recognised with such a highly deserved honour. We congratulate them for all their contributions leading to this achievement. This is undoubtedly a very exciting time for RNA science, especially within the field of RNA therapeutics and mRNA vaccines. We are excited to continue developing Oxford Nanopore’s unique ability to accurately read modified bases using long-read direct RNA sequencing – and support RNA research and biopharma manufacturing as these burgeoning fields advance.”

Further information:

Oxford Nanopore’s direct RNA sequencing kit (SQK-RNA004) is sensitive to a variety of RNA modifications and stands alone as the sole sequencing platform capable of accurately reading native full-length modified RNAs. More information on this kit can be found here.

• Published on: October 2 2023

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