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Fieldwork v. Journalism

First, it’s important to know if your assignment calls for field research in an academic sense or whether it calls for research that is more journalistic in nature.

Journalists and field researchers look for different things in choosing who to interview and write about people differently. Think back to the section on finding sources where we went over popular versus academic sources. Academic sources use their own primary research or field research. Journalists, who write popular sources, often interview others who did the research. If your assignment asks you to “interview an expert,” that’s probably journalism. Journalists usually give direct credit and tell about the person they interviewed. However, field researchers protect the identity of their subjects by using pseudonyms. These are some of the key difference between journalism and field research. It can be a tricky line, so ask your professor if you aren’t sure.

If you are conducting journalistic research, you may use some of the same methods listed below, so keep reading, but keep in mind how your project might vary depending on the approach your class takes to primary research.

Quantitative v. Qualitative

Another key categorical distinction is made in primary research between quantitative and qualitative research.

Quantitative research deals with measurement and analysis. It is a deductive form of inquiry, which is to say that a researcher will likely begin with a question, make a prediction, and develop a methodology for measuring phenomena. Primary data collection, in this case, may involve obtaining responses from people (through a survey or questionnaire), observation, content analysis or experiments in order to numerically quantify and analyze data.

Qualitative research is an inductive form of inquiry that is concerned largely with how phenomena are experienced and how meaning is constructed. A researcher might conduct an in-depth interview or focus group, collect personal narratives or examine field notes in order to develop a hypothesis. As these examples suggest, qualitative research seeks to understand something from the perspective of people who have experience with it.

Both are valuable forms of primary research and they can even be used as complements to each other.

For further reading on quantitative and qualitative research, see:

Denzin, Norman K. and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2^nd ed. Sage Publications, 2000.

Fallon, Marianne. Writing up Quantitative Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Teaching Writing: Book 6. Sense Publishers, 2016.

Specific Methods

Another way to discuss “Types of Primary Research” is to consider particular methods. Interviews generally generate Qualitative research, while Surveys may generate Qualitative or Quantitative data, depending on how they are structured and applied.

Interviews

Researchers conduct interviews in order to obtain the perspective of experts in the field or people with first-hand experience.

In your research for ENG 104 or 114, you may be asked to create a video or audio recording of your interview (clips from the recording may be included in a multi-modal project). Alternatively, you might conduct an in-person interview without recording, in which case you should take extensive notes and be sure to record a few complete quotes. You could also conduct an interview via email, which allows the interviewee to respond to questions at their convenience, but eliminates the kind of exchange available in conversation.

Surveys

Both surveys and interviews collect self-reported data from subjects, but unlike interviews, which usually provide in-depth insight from a single or a few subjects, surveys collect basic information from a large pool of subjects. The result is that surveys are very useful in identifying and analyzing trends. Surveys should be brief and they should focus on measurable information. Closed questions that can be answered “yes” or “no” or ranked on a scale are best for surveys, although providing a space for subjects to elaborate can also be valuable depending on the size of your survey pool. Often, the biggest challenge in doing research through surveys is finding enough participants to provide a representative sample of a larger community.

Observations

Observations involve being attentive to the world around you. A researcher first identifies a place where phenomena related to the research topic can be observed: an inquiry into traffic patterns might take you to a well-traveled road, while research about college student eating habits would be best explored at a university dining hall. Then, the researcher defines parameters for the observation. Will you be an unobtrusive observer, looking on from the outside, or will you be a participant observer? How long will you observe? Will you conduct the observation more than once and, if so, what variables (such as time of day) might affect your data? A useful method for recording data is the double-entry log, in which the researcher records events in one column and reflections in another.

Artifact Analysis

While we tend to think of primary research as interacting with others, sometimes primary research involves looking directly at texts. If you think of “artifact” in a familiar sense, you might think of an archeologist studying pottery from an ancient civilization to learn more about their culture. This kind of research is an example of primary research; however, artifacts don’t have to be from ancient civilizations. Whenever you are using texts as artifacts in the sense that you are gathering first-hand data from them rather than reading someone else’s study for information, you are conducting an artifact analysis. For example, if you read drafts of a classmate’s papers to trace their writing process, you would be doing an artifact analysis. Similarly, you can use the library archives to find first-hand accounts of historical events, such as diary entries.

Summary

There are many different types of primary research. For the most part, ENG 104 & 114 use fieldwork, but you may also be asked to do more journalistic research. Know whether you need quantitative or qualitative research and choose a research method that aligns with your research question. In the next section, you’ll learn how to gather data using the method or methods you have choosen.

NEXT: Gathering Evidence