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Ethnographic fieldwork involves researchersimmersing themselves in the society to collectdescriptive data. As Hammersley and Atkinson( 2007 , p. 3) contended, conducting fieldworkinvolves the ethnographer participating, overtlyor covertly, in people s daily lives for an extendedperiod of time, watching what happens, listeningto what is said, asking questions throughinformal and formal interviews, collecting documentsand artefacts in fact, gathering whateverdata are available to throw light on theissues that are the emerging focus of inquiry.

Qualitative Field research is especially effective for studying subtle nuances in attitudes and behaviours and for examining social processes over time. The main strength of this method, then, lies in the depth of understanding that it allows.

Weakness of Qualitative ResearchField research has several weaknesses as well. First, qualitative research is not an appropriate means for arriving atstatistical descriptionsof large populations. Observing casual political discussions in restaurants, for example, would not yield trustworthy estimates of future voting behaviors of the total voting population. Nevertheless, the study could provide important insights into how political attitudes are formed.Field research also has a potential problem with reliability. Reliability can also be thought of as dependability: If you made the same measurement or observation again and again, would you get the same result? In field research, since observations and interpretations are subjective and personal, the researcher must take pains to address this and prevent their personal opinions and feelings from biasing their results.

Ethnography & Research23/09/2015 23:44

23/09/2015 23:44