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    Chapter 14

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    of 14
    6 haper 13 ment. You might conclude, Miller says, that men ane more supportive than ‘women are of equality for womes in combs roles. Some men with whom Mille spoke. however, ssid that women should be given the ight to serve ia ‘combat so that, once and forall, eservone will see that women cut af ‘Are men really what Miller called “hostile proponents” of equality for women? Could that be why the statistics show so many more men in favor of \women serving in combat units? Miller went back to her questionnate data About 20% of men in her survey sad that women should be assigned to com: bat units just like men were—but almost to a man they also sal that putting ‘women into combat units would reduce the military's effectiveness. In other words, the numerical analysis showed that Miller's voneept of hostile proponent of equality was vorect. This subtle concept advances oor understanding considerably of how gender harassment against women woeks inthe US. Army id you notice the constant feedhack between ethnographic and survey data here? The ethnography produced ideas for policy recommendations and for the content of @ questionnaire. ‘The questionnaire data illuminated and vali ddated many of the things that the ethnographer learned during participant observation. Those same survey data produced anomalies—things that did't quite ft withthe ethnographer's intuition, More ethnography turned up an ‘explanation forthe anomalies. Andso on. Ethnographic and survey data com bined produce more insight than ether does alone For more on participant observation lickiworh, see Bogdst 1972, Loftand 1976, Spradtey [Y80. Stocking 1983, Kirk and Miller 1986, Woods 1986, Fine nd Sandstrom 1988, Fenno 1990, Burawoy 1991, Behar 1996, Smith and Kornblum 1996, Gummerson 2000, DeWalt and DeWalt 2002, Anderson 2003, and Wolcott 2045 14 od Field Notes: How to Take Them, Code Them, Manage Them Those who ant use qualitative metho becuse they see fee than statistics ae in hrs ridesnakening Auptor ant Athropologisis collect many kinds of data, We collect audiotapes of ‘musical performances and of recitations of folktales snd myth: video. tapes of ceremonies, dances, und everyday activities; photographs: newspaper slippings: transcriptions of formal interviews: caches of perwnal leters But all anthropologists take field notes In this chapter I facus on field notes. how to write them, how to code them, and how to manage them. Many ofthe lee Sons about coding and managing field notes apply just as well ta transcripts of interviews and to other textual data, which P'l tke up in chapter 17 About Field Notes Pian to spend 2-3 hours every working day of a participant observation study writing up tield notes, working on your diary and clang interviews and notes. Ralph Bolton asked 34 anthvopologists about thet held mote prac tices; they reported spending anywhere from 1.5 hours «7 hours 2 day on write-up (1984:132), Remember that i€ takes twice as long to write up notes about a recorded interview as it does 10 conduct an interview in the firs place. You ane te listen tow recorded interview atleast once before you can writeup the essen 388 Chapter 16 fal ces rom it and the it aes lang asin gethentes on yo ned fall rameritons of nerve. panto spend 6-8 hours for cach hoe mere sing that the recon clear, the erie fin your com Tangage and you Rave a raering chine wth pedal. You ca at traction ine nhl yang wie reception softwar rae sou his Back incr nd se append F fe nrmaton om ransom bad war and sft) vey cilespe with whom ve ever cute his pecs that Best 1 set se tie each day or wockng on our mes, AME dnt sep om oar fc ey ge sal ha yon tn our eso orl them ap inh afternoon or veng cach dy. "The sae goes for your om though and impressions of eves you dot ether up every dy, ‘ie they te ev, you get tem This mans ht yo shouldnt et embed in of atv that pe vent yom wating ap el tes, Tere ae plenty of exceptions hs tule Here's one Ku a tying faites reat clte by eling ad feeling cera stores. You itd ows op the ays ld motes and yo feta cal om key ima hotel you to come Fer ater nbn sting oma ip inthe moming nd wants to el you hel the sy the had tll eater abt expec a a rege ng ‘Word War You cout postr that one down. Ba remember, 2st et dng ating except writin notes come the norm ater han the excptio Create many smal noes her than one lng ning commentary, Write your cron computer an} make maty septate sone for each da fne_raterthan ang to the same ong ay ater ay. The aa tage that you can name your nc hy te date of eration, Ta ay the order 30 you an atways ind particular days or wees) ote. Many all ils ae also ev ierto handle when we eto ext management and retieval programs Fay there tnd ee les whe Ses wig eld ote. Some people like to mere themselves completely i the led fut ad cnc onthe expec. The) ate op ed tes en ad tsthey find the time. Mont ethnographer advocate write up eld note every Gay. stile you sll capable eteing deta aot he dys event ad inactons I've done bth ad ke Miles and Huberman (1998), com Mince that bsesnepess abut Weiting Bld notes is the ny 0 0 How to Write Field Notes, The method I present here For making and coling Field notes was developed ‘and tested by the late Michael Kenny’ and me, between 1967 and 1971, when Pil Nwes: How ta Take Them. Cade Them, Marae Theor 0 te can those NSF-supported field schools in cultural anthropology that | deserted in chapter 13. Kenny and I relied initially on our awn experience ith field notes and we borrowed freely from the experience uf many co leagues, The method we developed—involving jottings. a diary. a daily log. and three kinds of formal notes—was used by 40 fiek-school participants in the United States and in Mexico and by others since then. Some years later after personal computers came on the scene. my students and I hegan to think shout using machines to help manage textual dats (Bernard and Evans 1983), Two things can be said about the method I'm going to lay eut here: (1) It Works: and (2) Is not the only way to do things. If you do field research, 4ov'll develop your own style of writing notes and you'll ad your own lite tricks as you go along. Sil the method deseribed here will help you work systematically at taking field notes and it wil allow yon to search through them quickly and easily o look for relations in your data. I wish T had sed this method when I vas doing my own M.A, and Ph.D. tcldwork—and L wish ‘hat computers and database management systems had heen avaiable then Four Types of Field Notes ‘You'll write four kinds of notes in Fieldwork: ottings. a diary. a log, and field notes proper. Jonings Field ottings—what Roger Sanjek calls seratch notes (1990:96)—are what fet you through the day. Human memory is a very poor recording device ‘specially for the kind of details that make the difference between pood and so-so ethnographic research. Keep a note pad sith you at all times and make fei jottngs on the spot. This applies to both formal and informal interviews Jn bars and cafés, in homes and on the street. It also applies o things that just strike you as you are walking along. Jot- tings will provide you with the tigger you need 0 recall lt af details that you dont hae time to write down while you're observing events o stening {o an informant. ven a few key words will jog your memory later. Rement bet Ifyou don’t write it down, i's gone Clearly, there are times when you just can’t take notes, Morris Feitich did research in the 1950s with the Mohawks in Brooklyn, New York, and on the CCavghnanage Reservation 10 miles south of Montreal. Hedi lo of partir ant observation in a har and. as Feilich tells it, every time he pulled out a ‘notebook his audience became hustle. So, Feilich kept a small notebook in 390 hope 8 his hip pocket and would periodically duck into the men’s room atthe bar to scribble afew jouings Frelich 19772159), William Sturtevant used stubby litle pencils to take furtive notes; he found the techniyue so useful he publish a note about it inthe American Anthro pologis (1959), When Hortense Powdermaker did er research on race rela tions in Mississippi in 1932, she took surreptitious notes on sermons at Af can American churches. “My pockethook was large,” she said, “and the ratebook in it as small” (1966175). [Every fieldworker cuns into situations where it's impossible to take notes, His always appropriate to be sensitive to people’ feelings, and itis sometimes 4 good idea to just listen attentively and leave your notebook in your pocket You'd be surprised, though how few of these Situations there are. Dot talk Yourself in not jtting dowa a few notes on the ingorrect assumption that ‘People won't hike i i you do, ‘The key isto take up the role of researcher immediately when you arrive at Your fel site, whether that site is @peasaat village ina developing nation ot 8 comporate office in Chicago. Let people know fron the rst day you arrive that you are there t study their Way o if, Don’t ty to become an inconspi= ous participant eather than what you realy ate: an observer who wants to participate as much as possible. Partiipan observation means that you ty t0 "experience the lie of your intormsnts (othe extent possible; it doesn’t mean tha you ty wo melt into the backround and become a fully accepted membet fof a eullae eter than your oa, {Ws usualy impossible o do that any vay. After four decades of coming and {going in Indian villages in Mexico, still stick out like sore thumb and hase yel to become the slightest it inconspicuous Be honest with people and keep your notepad out as much of the time as possible. Ask your informants for their permission to take notes while you are talking ith them. If people dont want you to take notes, they" ell you, (Or they may tell you to take notes when you don’t want to, Paul Killwoeth studied the social organization ofthe British Army. Since notebooks ae, as he says, “part of Army uniform,” he was able to go anywhere with his nie book in hand und take notes freely. But if he put his notehook aside Fa mre than a few minutes. soldiers would ask im ifhe was getting lazy, “More than fone relaxing moment.” he says, “was supped by someone demanding tha write something down” (19975), ‘Or they may ask 19 see your notes, A student researcher in one of our fed schools worked in a logging camp in Idaho. He would write up his notes at night ftom the jttings he took all day. Each morning at 6:00 A.M. he nailed the day's sheaf of wows (along with 8 pen on siting) to a tree FoF everyone 4 Took at, Some ofthe mon took te time to serbble helpful (or amuing, ot Fil Notes: Hove Take Tham, ide ao, Mage Th ~ rude) comments on the notes, I you use this tetmigue. wate out for the CNN effect. That's when people tell you things they want to fell everyone because they know you'te going Wo breabcast whatever they say. This fea disaster if You're trying to make everybody around you fect amide that you're not zing to blah about thei, Even when people get accostomed to your constant jttings, you can overdo it Emerson eta. (1945:23) cite the following Held note from an ethnographer who was studying divorce negotiations On one wcasion whoa tain ps dst. jthe mii] Began to apply some eye make-up while Iw nish waiting dawn some ntmevations Ske ashes inl Sd, “Are YoU wing tis down too” indicating the activity wth he ee pol The Diary Notes are based on obsersations that wil nt the basis of your publica tions. A diary, on the other hand is personal. 1s a place where you van run and hide when things get rough. You absolutely need & dary in am ethnography project. K will help you deal with Toneliness, fear another emotions tht Imake fieldwork difficult A diary chronicles how you feel und how you perceive your relations with ‘ther around you. Ifyou ate weal sigry at somone. you stuld write about it—in your diary. Jot down emotional highs and lows while they're happen: ing, if you can, and write them up ja your diary atthe end uf the day, Try to spend atleast half an hour each day pouring wit your soul to a diay. Later n, during data analysis, your diary will hecome an important professional document. It will zive you information that will help you interpret your field totes and will make you ware of yout personal biases. ‘The important thing about x dary is just to have one and to keep it separate from your other field aves. Fran Boss got engaged to Marie Keackowizer in May 1883, just 3 weeks betore beginning his ust ld ip. It way a grucling 15 months on Baffin Island and at se, Boas missed German society teibly and, although he couldn't mai the leters. he weote about 5) pages to is fiancée. Here isan excerpt fr his extraonlinary dary December 16, north Pas 1 omceteat. Do yo kno ow pass these long evenings? 1 Kant with me, wih Fam sting 0 that shall nt be se complsoly redncted fT rem, Life here ely sakes one dl an stupid. 1 fave to Nh shen T remember that diag oor ‘meal tonight H thought how gro a pang with plum sauee ould tae, But You have mo idea what an effet piste tl hunger el hunger ave on Person, Maybe Mr. Kant is good ante! The cas slnost unbelievable when Lremicrnber that's yor Uw it cet a red al the eles of good tse and tonight Titi this shu with With and un skin eating a sea meat which had so Be hack! up with a ane rd sta. contadition as one ca think jreedilywulping my ctw, I tht ma oF (Cate 198529) February 16. Anamitung 1 eng for semi conversation and For someone ‘wh really understands me! Unlrtuntely this ime fad ot bring Book ta ead, so Fcannot help myset 1 al all he aertnenients and everything ele ‘mone page ofthe Kiinvche Zeit [a magic. a four days shal have been ‘way eight monty. Ihave heard fom none of you foe four abd «hal months fini) When Malinowski was trapped ia the Trobrian Islands during Workd War I. he t00, missed his aneée and European society and occasionally lashed ‘ou at the Trbrianders in his diary (Malinowsks 1967:253-254), Pieldwork in another culture isan intense experience, but don't think that you have t0 be stranded in the Arctic or in Melanesia for things to get intense. Your diary will give you an outlet for writing things that you don’t want become part of « public record. Publication of Malinowski's and Boos di ries have helped make all eworkers aware that they are not alone in theit frailties and set-doubys The Log A Jog is running account of how you plan t spend your time, how you actually spend your ime. and how much money you spent, A good log is the key to doing systemati fieldwork and to collecting both qualitative and quar titative data on w systematic basis, A field log should be kept in bound books of blank. lined pages, Some of iy students have heen able to use snuheld computers with shedale-planning Software for their logs (Kenneth Sturrock, Lance Gravlee, personal commit cation), but iF you are not completely comfortable with that technology. then stick witha big, clunky logbook, at least 6° > 8 in size so tha you can see ata glance what your agenda is Each day of fieldwork, whether you're ut fora year ora week, should he represented by a double page of the log. The pages on the et shoud lst what you plan to don any wiven day. The facing pages will ecount what you ‘actually do each day Begin your log on pages 2 and 3. Put the date on the top of the even-num bred page to the left. Then, go threugh the entire notebook and pat the si Pet Ne: (0 Take Them, Code To, Manage Thom 393 cessive dates on the even-nunnbered pages. By doing this in advance. even the «days on which you “do nothing,” wr are away from your field site, you will have double log pages devoted to them. ‘The first day oF two that you make a log you will use only the right-hand pages where you keep track of where you go, who you see, and what You spend. Some people like to carry their logs around with them. Others prefer {0 jo dovsn the names of the people they run into or interview, and enter the information into their logs when they write up their notes in the evening. Keep an alphabetized file of 25-word profiles on as many people you meet as you This can be on index cands oF on a computer database. The file will make it much easier to remember who you're dealing With. Before you ga into any second or third interview. look up the key biographical information you have shout the person (handheld computers are perfect for this sort of thing). Dur ing the first couple of minutes of the interview, work ina vomnment that shows you remember some of those ey bio-facts, You'l he surprised how far that take you, Jot down the times that you eat and what you eat (especially if you are doing fieldwork in another culture) and write dawn ho yo eat with and how ‘much you spend on all meals away from your house. You'd he surprised at how much you lear from this. to. Afr a day or two, you will bein to se the fef-hand sheets of he log. AS ‘you go through any given day. you will hink of many things that you want 8 {know but can’t resolve om the spot. Write those things owen in your jot book rin your log. When you write up your field motes think about who you need ‘o interview, or what you need 1 observe, regarding each of the th wondered about that day Right then and there. open your log an commit yourself to finding each thing out at a particular time on a particular day. finding something out quires that you talk to a particular person, then put thal person's ane in the Jog, too. If you don’t know the person 10 talk to, then put dovsn the name of someone whom you think can steer you tothe right person ‘Suppose you're studying a school system. I's April Sth and you are talking 'o MIR, a fifth-grade teacher. She tells you that singe the military government took over, children have to study politics tor 2 hours every day nd she doesnt lke it Write a note t0 yourself in your log 1 ask mothers of some of the children about this fsve and to interview the school principal Later on, when you are writing up your notes, you may decide not to inter view the principal until after you have accumulated more data about how ‘mothers in the community feel about the new curriclum, On the left-hand page for April 231d you note: “urget date for interview with school prin a4 Chapter 4 Pal.” On the leftchund page of April 1th you note: “make appointment for interview on 24nd with school principal.” For April 6th you note: "need inter views with mothers about new eumiculom.” ‘As soom ast comes to you that you need to know how many kilowat hours ‘of electricity were burned in svilicge, or you need to know the difference in Prive between fish sold otf a hoat end the Sime fish sold in the local market ‘commit yourself i your log tow specific time when you wil try to resolve the ‘questions. Whether the question yeu think of requires formal appointment, ora diet, personal observation, oan informal interview in a bar write the ‘question down in one of the lel-hand pages af your log Don't worry i the planned activity log you cteate For yourself winds up looking nothing like the activities you actually engage in from day to day Frankly. you'll be lucky to do half the things you think of to da, much less do them when you want to, The important thing isto fill those left-hand pages as far out into the future as you can, with specific information that you need and specitc tasks you need to perfrm to get that information, This isnot just because you want to use your time effectively, but hecause the process of building lo forces you to think hard about the questions you really want (© answer in your reseatch and the data you really need. You will Start any field research project Knowing some of the questions you are inter ested in. But those questions may change; you may add some and drop oth {ers—or your entice emphasis may shit The right-hand pages of the log are for recording what you actually wccom plish each day. As T said, you'll he appaed at fst at how litle resemblance ‘he lfichand and the rightshand pages have to one another. Remember, gor field notes do net depend on the punctuality of informants 1 your ability to-do all che things you want todo. They depend on your sys tematic work over a perio of time. If some informants do not show up for ppointments (and often they won"). you can evaluate whether oF not you ‘ally need the data you thought you were going 1 get from ther. I you do need the data then puta note on the left-hand page for that same day, or for the nextday. to contact the informart and reschedule the appointment 1 you still hase no luck, you mas have to decide whether i's worth more ‘of your time to tack down a particular person or a particular piece of iaforma tion, Your log will tell you how much time you've spent on it already and will ‘make the decision easier. There's plenty of time for everything when you think you've got months stretching ahead of you. But you only havea finite “mount of time in any fiekdwork prot to get useful Jat, and the time goes very quickly Feld Noes Hows Tae Pm, Code Prem. Mavase Thom Ms Field Notes And now. about field notes... Let's face it: After a hard day trekking al ‘over [town [the village) [the jungle] lthe desert) interviewing people, hanging ut, and recording behavior, it's hard to sit down and write up field notes Sometimes, it's dowaright intimidating. We know this much about field notes for sure: The aster you write up your observations, the mote detail you can {et down. More is beter. Much more i mich better (except, of course when data are systematically biased, in which ease mone is decidedly worse) There are still places where you can’t haul in a big desktop computer or find the power to run it, but handheld computers, with real Keyboards, now ‘un on small batteries that can be charged from solar power cell, You can ‘writeup field notes with a word processor anywhere. We're not going back 1 paper field notes, but taking notes on a eomputer Imeans that you have to be doubly paranoid about protecting thene notes. If You have access tothe Interet, you can e-mail copies of your notes to a cape Of trusted friends or colleagues (encrypt the notes if you need to), The fiend or colleague can print a eupy of your notes For you, 0 you've gota rd copy somewhere in case your computer is stolen wnd all your hackup disks see destroyed in a fie atthe same time. Think this can’t happen? Think again, ‘Trees ae a renewable resource. Make paper backups. And upload your notes tan Internet server for good measure. I you eat use your college's Of Un versiy's server (many restrict the fle space that students can use), then rent space on a private server (see appendix F). There are three kinds of feld notes: methodological notes, descriptive notes, and analyte noes Methodological Notes Methodological notes deal with technique in collecting data. If you work cout a better way’ to keep a log than Use desribed here, don't just use your ‘ew technique; waite it up in your fekd notes and publish a paper about your technique so others can benefit from your experience, (See appendir F for a list of professional journals that publish articles cn research methods inthe social and behavioral sciences.) If you tind yourself spending too much time with marginal people in the culture, make a note afi, and diseuss how that «ame to be, You'll discover lite tricks of the tad, like the “uh-huh” tech nique discussed in chapter 9. (Remember that one? I's where you lear how and when to grunt encouragingly wo keep an interview going.) Write up notes 6 Chapter 6 about your discoveries. Mark ll these notes with a big "M™ at the tap—M for “metho Methodological notes ate ako about your ova growth a8 an instrament of| data collection. Collecting data is alway’s awkward when you begin eld Project, but if gets easier as you become more comfortable in a new culture During this eritical period of adjustment, you should intellectuatize what you're learning about doing teldwork by taking methodological notes. When {frst arrived in Greece in 1960, {was invited to dinner at “around 7 fea” When Tarived at around 7:15 (what thought was & polite 15 mites late) was embarrassed to Hind hat my'bost was till aking a bath Tsuld have known that be really meant “around ¥ Fx” when he said “around 7. My methodological nate forthe occasion simply stated that I should not show up for dinner betone 4. im the futur ‘Some weeks later. figured outthe general rues for timing of evening sti ites including cocktails, dinner. and late-night desserts in the open squares ‘of Athens. Robert Levine has studied the psychology of time by asking people around the world things like “How long would you wait for somcone whe ‘as late for a lunch appointment” On average, Bruzilians say they'd wait 62 ‘iinues. On average. says Levine, “Americans would nced to be back at their fice two minutes before” the late Braviian lunch sas just getting underway (Levine 19972130), When I began fieldwork withthe Raha people of central Mexico in 1962, sas offered pulgue everywhere I went (Pulgne ip fermented nectar fod the ‘mawvey vactus,) Irie to refuse politely: [couldn't stand the stuf But people \were very insistent and seemed offended if I didn’t aceept the dink. Things vere particularly awkward when T showed up at someone's house and there were other guests there. Everyone enjoyed pulgue but me, and most of the ‘ime people were tov poor to have beer around to offer me, AAC that time, I wrote 3 note that people “felt obliged by custom to offer ‘ulgue to guests.” | was dead wrong. As I eventually learned, people were testing me to see if | vas affiliated with the Summer Insitute of Linguistics (SIL), an evangelical missionary group (and, of course. nondrinkers of alco. hol tha had its regional headquarters in the area where I was working. ‘The SIL is comprised of many excelent linguists who produce books and articles on the grammar of the norwritten languages of the world and transla tions of the Bible into those languspes, There wis serious fiction hetween the Indians who had converted to Protestantism and those who remained Catholic {twas important for me to disasseiate myself fom the SIL. so my method logical note discussed the importance of conspicuously consuming alcohol and tobacco in order to identify myself as an anthropologist and not as a mis sionary Fd Nes: How Take Tm, Cade hem, Mana Deo » Nine years later I wrote Ale ai this time, sil dot ke pga sre it's wna to dink out of the gourds hat are pase aund. P's taken to crying a couple of si pach o bc nthe car and welling people tht tn st ke uu, and wellng peop that'd be plesed to have them join mein bose. I they don't offer me beer ‘offer itt them. This works just ne, and Keep my reputation of independence thom the SIL iat Eight years later. in 1979, 1 read that William Partridge had similar pre icament during his work in Colombia (Kimball and Partridge 1979:35, Everywhere Partridge went, it seems, people offered him beet, even at 700 in the moming, He needed an acceptable excuse. he sid. to avoid spending all his waking hours petting drunk After few months inthe Held. Parriige found tha telling people “Ewoy somando una pastilla” ("Tm taking a pill”) dul the tick, Locally, the pill fefered tin this phrase was used in ieating venereal diseane. Everyune knew that you didn’t drink alcoho while you were taking this pill, and the excuse vas perfect for adding a litle vrity boost to Partidge’s eputation, Parteids ‘sed his knowledge of local eulure to get out of a toigh situation, Methodological notes, then, have to do with the conduct of tickd inquiry itself. You will vant to make methodological notes expecially when you do something silly shat breaks a cultural norm. If you are feeling particularly sheepish, you might want write those feelings into your diary where no one cise wll See what you've writen; but you don’t want o waste the oppectunity ‘0 make a straightiorward methodological note on such occasions. te wel, Descriptive Notes Descriptive notes are the meat and potatoes of fieldwork, Most notes are descriptive and are trom two sourees: watching and listening. Interviews with informants produce actes of notes, especially if you use a recorder and later write down large chunks of what people say, Observations of processes ike feeding children, building a tinue, making beer, und son, also produce lot of notes. Descriptive tcld notes may contain birth records that youve copied out ofa local church registry: or they may consist of summary descriptions of village plaza, or an urban shopping mall, of any enviromental features that you think are important ‘The best way to learn o write deseriptive ie notes isto practice doing i with others who are also trying to learn. Get together with one of more par, ers and observe a process thats unfamiliar o all of you. I coud be a church 8 hope 14 service other than ane you've sees before, o it could bean occupational proc es that you've not witnessed. (I remember the firs time I saw plasterers hang celligs: They did it on tits.) Whatever you observe. try to capture in teld notes the details of the behav jor andthe environment. Try wo get down “what's going on.” Then ask infor ‘ants who are watching the cereriony or process to explain what's going on and try to get notes dovin on ther explanation. Late, get together with your research partnr(s) and discuss your notes with one another. You'll find tht to or three people sce much more than just one sees. You might uso ind that {You and your partners saw the same things but wrote down different subsets Of the same information, Analytic Notes You will write up fewer analy notes than any other kind. This is whete you lay out your ideas about how you think the eulture you are studying ‘organized. Analytic notes can be bout relatively minor things. When I finally figured out the rules for showing up on time for evening functions in Greece, that was worth an analytic note. And when Tunderstond the rules that gov {med the naming of children, that was worth an analytic not, too, ‘As I sad in chapter 2 in the section on theory, it took me almost year to figure out why the casualty rate anong Kalymnian sponge divers was going "up. while the worldwide demand lor natural saniges mas going. down, When it finally made sense, I sat down and wrote a long, long analytic Reld note about it After thinking about the problem for many year, fnally understood ‘why bilingual education in Mexico does not result in the preservation of Indian languages (i's a long tory;see Bernd 1992), As the ideas developed, | wrote them up ina series of notes, ‘Analytic notes ate the producto” a lot of time and effort andl may go oa for several pages. They are often the husis for published papers. or for chapters in Alissertations and books. They willbe the product of your understanding and that will come about through your organizing and working with descriptive and methodological notes over a period of tine, Don’t expect to write a preat ‘many analytic notes, but write them all your life, even (especially) alter you are out ofthe fel, Co ig Field Notes Gene Shelley (1992) studied peaple who sulle from end-stage kidney ds ease, Most patients are om hemdiaysis, Some ate om peritoneal dialysis The Pld Noes Howe to Take Poem, Coe Pe, Manage Peo ww» “hemo” patients go to a dialysis center several times a week, wil pero" patients perform a Jialysis (called continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, or CAPD) on themselves several ines a day Figure 14.1 shows two descriptive notes from Shelley's esearch, The stuf? along the top of each note are codes. Fist, there's a delimiter (she used the $615 8-16-89: 757.9; Or H Dr. H explains that in pentoneal dialysis you exchange 2 liters of tu sev oa et 1 yee on bn de). Women co aout 9 nes and | men about times because of largor body size. People mostly do a “deel” for about 8 hours overnight white they slaep (uid Is inlowel into perio eal cavity and allowed fo sit there overnight). Then they do pertoneal de ‘ysis when thay wake up and another time or two during the Gay. Pesto. neal ialysis patients are prety close to being healthy. They have to take ‘medication but you cannot tol them trom healthy people, he says $ 742 8-90-89: 57.3, 757.5; Nurse Ralph B. CAPD training takes about a week to 10 days. During this time, the patient comes in every day and receives training, Ralph thinks that when the whole family comes Infor the taining, the patients do better. They have about 20 CAPD patients night now. Ralph said there are 3 types of CAPD Patents: (1) those patients who are already on nemo and IM pretty good shape, usually welhmotivated. (2) those who are late geting started and 410 in trouble (medically) and are hurriedly trying to ear the procedu. {i takes 2 weeks to get a catheter inserted and then have it eal. Since this | surgery is viewed as “elective surgery.” i can be bumped and resched led.) Only attr surgary and healing can the wraining take place. (3) those ‘who have lost a kidney which was transplanted, They are just waiting for another kidney and they view CAPD as Temporary and are not that mot | valed to learn itbecause they think hey wont be on tlong, | Figure 14.1, Fld nes from Gene Shelley stay kidney disease patients (1992) Repredaced by permission. dolar sign) that marks the heginning of each mute, This lets you pack al the notes together in one big file if you want to but lls @ word processor or text management program know where notes begin and end. Next iv. unigue num ber that idemtites the note in a continuing sequence, starting with O01. Next isthe date Then come some numbers that refer w topical codes (more on this in the seetion coming right up). Finally, at the end of the codes atthe top of each 0 Chapter 18 Field note, there's a exypuie indicat ofthe person to whom Shelley attributes {the infurmation, When William Partridge interviewed cannabis growers in Colombia, be identified the texts by w leuer coce and kept the only copy of his notes in locked trunk (Kimball and Partridge 1979:174), You don’t have to be inter Viewing cannabis growers to be paranoid about keeping your informants iemity secret. You never know what seemingly ianocwous information might embarrass or hut somesne if your data fall int the wrong hands, Topical Codes: The OCM Shelley used a moditied version of the Outline of Cultural Materials, ot OCM. to code er fcld notes. The OCM was developed originally by G. P, Murdock in 1950 as a way’ 0 index and organize ethnographic material in the Human Relations Area Files. (The HRAP is library of ethnographic and archaeviogical material on culture around the world, past and present. More bout HRAM and the OCM in the section on content stalysis in chapter 17.) There are 82 big cultural domains inthe OCM, in blocks of 10, from 10 41, Block 58, for example, covers marriage with codes for nuptials (54S), Livorce (5H6), and so on. Other major domins are things like kinship, enter tainment, social straitication, war, health, sex, and religious practices, The ‘OCM has gone through several edtons over the years. The Fl sersion, which you can print out and take with you tothe field, i available online at tp! ‘wow yal.edufhratfeolletions hun (Murdock et al. 2008) Every project is unique, so you'll need codes that aren't in the OCM, but yout can add decimals (or words) and extend the codes forever. Table 14. shows Shelley's adaptation of the OCM code 757 (medical therapy): TABLE Seley’ (1992) adaption ofthe OCM Cove 757 on Medical Taerapy 1 Transplantation Hemealyis 187.3 CAPD peo ilysisy 3574 Home dl 187.5 Adjunct to days 7576 Compisace with medial regime 1757.7 Machinery involved in dialysis 137 Medicines 1579 Medial ent ves 78791 HIV test ress on asd Nes: Hose 4 Tab Thr, Coe Then, Ma Tem “0 Don’t he put off by the lengthiness of the OCM coding list. That is its strength, Lots of anthropologists have used the OCM over the years to code their ied notes and other materials, George Foster eed his SO years of notes tn the Mexican community of Teinizuntzin using the OCM, and Rabert Van Kemper uses i to code the dita that he's collecting an the same community (George Foster, personal communication; Kemper 2002:289), John Honigman used it in is fieldwork on Canadian Indians; the 37 field researchers in Clyde kluckhohn’s Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures Project all used the OCM to code their notes, as did the fldworkers on the Cornell University ‘eam project studying a village in India (Sanjek 19108, 232, 331). You'll only use a fraction of the codes on any given project, But once you stat using itn the field. you'll quickly tind yourself building supplemental coving schemes to ft your particular needs Figure 14.2 shows two more descriptive field notes coded with the OCM, ‘The first is from fiekiwork T id in Tarpon Springs, Florida (Bernard 1965) andthe second is from a study of an acean-yoing research vessel (Bernard and Killworth 1974), Figure 14.3 shows how Gordon Gibson of the Smithsonian) used the OCM tw code a series of ethnographic films on the Himba, a cattle herding society in Namibia (in Kreiss and Stockton 1980:287), In the st note in figure 14.2 {used the OCM codes for assimilation, cultural goal, vacations, and retire ment. also auded a code, K, which marks people's relations to Kalymnos, the island in Greece where they ot their parents were bom. In this note, $71 is the OCM cade tor social relationships and groups. 1 expanded it to include 371.1, whieh I eall “between-group conflict.” In figure 14.3 the entire film is about a wedding, so each piece is cosled 585, the OCM code for nuptials. Where the hut is seen, the ede for dwellings (G42) is inverted, Where the tlm shows people eating meat, the codes 262 (diet) and 264 (eating) are inserted. fn the Frame at 11:45:10, the code for Visiting (574) appears. and in the two eater frames, the eode for childhood sctvities (857) is inserted. When Gibson di this work in the 1970, the dat base was held on a mainframe. Today, you can wateh an ethnographic film on DVD and enter eades into a datahase as you go. (For more on this, sce the section on database management, below, and chapter {7 on text aalsis). Topical Codes: Other Coding Schemes ‘There are, of eourse, other useful checklists for cong cultural dita, Allen Johnson and hs colleagues developed one in conjunction with Johnson's Time Allocation Project (see chapter 15 on ditect observation methods). Like the OCM and like Notes and Quertes sx Anthropogy, the Jonson etal. (1987) shecklst can be used as a reminder of the kinds of data you might want to w Caper | s 110715164 Cotes nouse Ex D177, 15, 29, 087 ] | Exim arecontip ok Rolmnoy und eent seco the ge vow he no bm Ho aa oen bak 22 yous wate ais | oat hings On tear ha, es barbara Roser tte toK. “Thats what evenoody around her aks about doing when they | tor he sys heh, he soeon nee en | tots «Bagg oy estan toy esta a ee rnoteata ey tna gate eee ee ay thet on oy ke my ss tape a sem te tha rman yor neu ha wars a ta stooge ane an ate | germans nv rwesosrss | ‘Although the mass is open, I rarly see any of the crow eating with the oct ertiss on tis crus. This was the case on the other crise, too. The cen takes aot ess tie fo eat han the scientists who st round “shooting the | Sonat ater der as Pd say, Theresa shorage of mess seat and | | baople nave o eatin shits, Pays that annoys him o 00th sient | Bersonnel just siting around and lingering over cote after dinner wen | they coud be ating others sit down. "That's just another example ot how obtuse these guys are.” As | was considering his uso ofthe word “obtuse” he said “They so wrapped up in themselves, thoy just dont thnk abot caer poopie” Figure 142, 10 eld nes collet in a general ethnographic research praject and as template for coding lta collected during field research, Many people find the use of numer codes distracting. Matthew Miles and Michel Huberman (1994), authors of « wonderful book on qualitative daa analysis, advocated the use of words or mnemonics that 100k ike the original concept. Like many researchers they find that mnemonic codes like ECO for economies, DIV for divorce, and so en) are easier to remember than numbers Figure 14.4 shows @ piece of Miles and Huberman’s codebook for a study ‘hey did of innovations in school ssstem. ‘Anoxher value of using your own codes is that they develop naturally from your study and you'll tnd it easy to remember them as you cole your notes ech day, Strauss and Corbin (1990:58) recommend in vivo codes 4s names for things. In vivo codes are eatehy phrases oF words used by informants. In Fil Notes: How ta Take Them, Cade The, Manace 33ON (fim) £5 (1961) 1960 — Hime] 140829 | Picture) Bi and omparion walk toward a then S8S° bride and unmamed git drop to tet knees anc | 342 ra into hut People ate seen sting non of | ____ hu as he two dlsappear inside | ‘Sound — |The bede andthe” companions solemnly etn | | tothe natin Vesenga's vilage where she has | ben staying, an she ar he unmarmed ge ‘enor the nut People siting standing nest hut —— | Women and chron o the vilage, and Boss 542 | visting. fom cine vitages. have gatered io sit | S74 =a I | ear the bride a | sr 144222 | Petro | Boys se : 555° ‘Sound 22 | as, ‘79850 Pine Mein bask and mon Sat: tng: Aman S85" Sanding andastng meat ita bane pac ho | 264 | Bore on absh‘The groom soued hs arms. | $34 | fides ons nove Hotes aca cect fom spa anne und bates hea ‘Sein | Toe beroon ond ends ae cote LPB | oy'tne bower, une thy ae fishing. Figure 14.3. Gibson's Casing ofthe Him Tins ‘Short Deseristion ‘Adoption Process ap AP-chron/pub | AP-chronprov |AP:Eventchronology-ofical version [AP-Event chronology-subterranean | sees Figure 144. Part of Miles and Habermas cling scheme ao Chapter 4 his Study of Alaskan tshermen Jefftey Johnson heard people talking about a “elown.” The word tured outo be a terniic label for type of person fund fn many orsanizations. The tem emerged in vivo From the mouths of Joh son's informatus. (For nite or in vivo coding, see the section in chapter 17 ‘on grounded theory in text analy), A good way to find in vivo codes isto use & compoter program t count the hhumber of times that words oceu in your text (see appendix F for programs that do this). The nonttivial words that appear often ate hints shout themes {Your nores, When you have a list of eades words. use your word procesor rab the crdes and put them into your notes wherever you Wat 1 you use your own coding scheme, or if you moafy an existing schene like the OFM), be sure to write up a verhose voxebuok in case you forge what “AS” oF “EMP” or whatever-cute-abbrevistions-you-deamed-up at thetime-you-i-the-coding me And don't yet (o0 picky when you make up your own codes. Cading is supposed to he datu reduction. not data proliferation, Matthew Miles sas involved ina big ethnographic project 1 evaluate six schoo Al the researc «ers developed their own codes and the code list quickly grew to 202 eatepores fof actors, progesses, organizational forms, and efforts. Each of the sit researchers insisted that his or her field site was unique and thatthe bighiy specialized codes were all necesary. It bocanie nypossible for anyone to ue the unwieldy system, and they just stopped coding altogether (Miles 1948129), ‘The important thing isnot which coding scheme you use is that you coe Your notes and do it consistently. In most projects, the coding scheme taker shape as the notes are written. The scheme is revised lot efore it becomes Mable, Some anthropologists een those wha use the OCM, wait & month or ore, to see how their ied motes are shaping up, before they think about how fevvode the notes The Mechanies of Coding. Put cules diretly into the text of te field nates, either atthe top of each ote, oF 0 the right or left side of each note, Figure 14.5 shows an example of coding across the top and of eoding down the edge, using mnemonic eas, The choice of top coding or edge coding is really a matter of taste—you ‘can do one as easily as the other in your word processor. Ifyou choose ede ‘oding just denne a narrow colunn of, say. 15 oF 20 spaces forthe eoes and 8 broad colunin of, say, 50 oF 55 columns for the hody of text eld Noes: Hv to Take Thm, Code Them, Mae Thom aus [Coding across the top 412 MAXOR 101290 MIG WOM ECO | This note Is number 412. I's about an informant named MA in these notes, | | and she is trom a vilage you label XOR. The date is October 12, 1990, and the note is about MA's migration from her vilage fo the city in search of Jwork. The note is coded using abbreviations as Being about migration | O41), about women (WOM), and anout economies (ECO), [sates ae oo 42M ‘This note is number 412. Its about an informant named xoR MA in these notes, and she is from a vilage you label | XOR. The date Is’ October 12, 1990, and the note 15 | 101250 | is about MA's migration trom her vilage to the ity in | Search of work. The note Is coded In abbreviations 2s wom being about migration (MIG), about women (WOM), and bout econamies (ECO) Eco 0 Figure 14.5, Coding tld te Coding vs, Indexing | want to make clear the three different uses othe word “code.” When 1 Sav: “Use codes for places and informant names.” the ward “eave” means an ‘encryption device. The object isto hide information, not dispense it, When b say: “After the informunt name and place, leave room for topical eos,” the word “code” means un indexing device. The objects to identity the exivtence ‘ofa variable. The third meuning ofthe word “cove” is a meusurement device Suppose you do 100 interviews with women about their birthing exper ence. If you stick the code PAIN into the text whenever a woman mentors anything about pain or about feeling hurt, you'd be using the code PAIN sn ‘indexing device—that is. as vay t find your way hack to all the places in the text where anything about pain is mentioned. H's jst like the subject index to this book. 1 says that “quota sampling” is on page 187 and sure enough, when you go to page 187, you tind you're reading ahout sampling Suppose, though, that you make judgments about the amount of paia by counting words ike “agony” a indicating more pain than words ike “dis. tess" of by looking atthe cantent and mening of the text and counting “It ‘as painful ut I got through i” as indicating less pain than “I prayed I would ie." You might use codes like LO-PAIN, MID-PAIN, or HL-PAIN and in this «36, you'd he using cous for actual measurement. We'll talk more about this in chapter 17 on txt analysis a Chaps Analyzing Field Notes [think it's best co start sith the ocular sean ethod. oF eveballing. In this fow-lech method, you quite tery lay out your notes in piles onthe Aor, You live with them, handle them, read them over and over again tack bunches ‘of them to a bulletin board, and eventually get a feel for what's in thet. Thin is followed by the imerocular peression test, in which pattems jump out and hit you between the eyes. (II you tke your notes on a computer. print them for this part ofthe analysis) This may nor seem like a very scientific way oF doing things, but don't know any way tha's better. No researcher, working ale for year, ean pro dace more field notes than she or he ean grasp by pawing and shuffling ‘rough them. For shecr lun and analytic efficiency, nothing beats pawing and shutting through your notes and thinking abut dem, Eventually, though, you'll want to use a text management (TM) program, ' not unusual for antheopologists to produce 10,000 words some Wwoeks i Field notes, That's the equivalent of a 0-page, double-spaced paper. or about six pages a day. This won't happen every week, but when you're doing field work, bombard ll day long with nes sensory experiences and interviewing informants about topics that really mean something to you. writing 40 pages of fold notes is easy. Even at a more modest clip, you're likly to accumulate 500-1.) pages of notes in year That pile of ic notes can get yey intimidating, and the next thing you ‘know you're bucking avay trom taking alot of notes onthe theory that fewer notes are easier to handle. I know; it happened to me, and it has happened to many of our eolleagues, TM software ean help, ‘TM programs make light work cut of searching through tons of notes for combinations of words ar phrases. With a’TM program, you can ask the con puter questions like: “Find every nate in which Fused the word woman but ‘only if Lalso used the word migration within thee lines ofthe word woman, Since codes are just words, you can substitute OCM eode numbers or in vivo ‘odes or mnemonic codes in the queries, For example: If you've left upto {hee lines at the tap of each nowe for topical codes, you'd ask the computer ind 166 and 572.1 i they occur within three lines of one another." TM programs may also empt you to avoid coding your field notes, Resist. this tempuation, You can watch 4 welding ceremony for 3 hour, spend a day and a halt writing up 22 pages of notes on your observations, and never une the words “marriage” in your notes f you use a text manager to find the word "marriage." you'll retieve all the notes in which you did use that word, bat you won't tind any ofthe 22 pages where you wrote abuut that wedding cee mony you attended Fld Noses: How to Take Mem, Code Them, lana Them 07 I you do edge coding. you need slighty diferent search strategy. Sup. pose you have 33 lines of fext om each double-spaced page of fiekd notes or interview transcription. You could have cles anywhere along the edge ofthe page from line 110 ine 66. Decide on marker, ike the dolar sign, to delimit the top and bottom of each field note, Then ask a TM program t0 look for a pair o a series of cades between consecutive markers. Figure 14.6 shows one of Gene Shelley's notes coded along the edge | She says the social network is important, in | her opinion. It's important to nave a person to escora] ‘support you (emotionally and physically) Her | fiends and schoo! children (she was a teacher | for deat students for a short time), called her to | | 5 6 how she was doing and they stil get in touch with ner now, However, ner fends cry land say what a brave person she is and she ceesnt ke nem ory. Peope get upset sol | ‘onit talk to them about i” She also doesnt ke ta talk to people for another reason. She stated dalyisn 1972 Since then, al obers | who started wih her (in her eohert) are dead She doesn't want to meet new poopie, She ‘doestt want o tak to other patients about per ‘sonal stuf because sho wil got atached to them and they wil die (or suffer horribly with | another disease like diabetes). Even with peo- | 187 le who are not sick, she doesnt always tell | ‘everyone about CAPD. She would rather tak to them about normal things, not her disease Is bolle’ ego cd Held te s72 7822 76 Figure 146. Gone s Gregory Truex (1993) marks off chunks of text using what he calls the 'B-E convention.” He marks the heginning ofa chunk of related text with a code in angle brackets and ticks on the leer “B,” for beginning, Thea he ses the same code, again in angle brackets, withthe letter E” tacked on (0 ‘mark dhe end of the chunk, For example, Truex marks the beginning of any wext about land use with =LANDB> and marks the end of the block with . Then he uses TM program to retrieve chunks of text that ein with --LANDB™ and end ad Chase 8 with . end with , and contin some tid ede, like

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