17
FIELD RESEARCH
Have you ever been in a public space, like a coffee shop, restaurant, doctor’s office, or department store, and found yourself listening to someone else’s conversation? Have you ever watched others try to navigate an awkward social situation? Have you ever waited in a line, surreptitiously surveying everyone else? If you are majoring in a social science, chances are you love observing other people. Many of us are natural observers, watching others and making suppositions as to why they act in certain ways. This is the lure of observational research, or field research. Field research is primarily a qualitative research design where researchers go into the field, or a natural setting, to observe people, collecting very detailed information about individuals, groups, or interactions.
For professional (and armchair) social scientists, we are constantly taking in data wherever we are. Most of us practice “studied nonobservance,” or pretending not to notice what others are doing, in public spaces. Natural observers use this to their advantage to notice others in their natural habitats. In fact, while reviewing classic field studies in preparation for writing this book, McKinney did a little informal field observation of her own when she pulled out Laud Humphreys’s classic study, Tearoom Trade, at the airport waiting for a flight.
As she read from Tearoom Trade, McKinney realized something was happening. It was clear that several other airport patrons were interested in something around her. She tried to subtly observe the area around her to see what was causing a stir but saw nothing unusual. She finally realized what was happening. In this very public space, with children as well as adults whiling away the time before flights were announced, people were concerned about what she was reading. Tearoom Trade has a plain white cover with the title and subtitle of the book scrawled across the simple cover in large black letters: Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Mystery solved. A good guess would be that people were surprised by the “impersonal sex in public places” part of the title, and that they feared McKinney was reading an inappropriate how-to guide rather than a classic sociological study.
This natural interest in those around us is the core of social science—how do people relate to each other and interact with each other? Most social science students are introduced to their disciplines by a substantive course that allows them to explore the eccentricities of societies, groups, and/or individuals. For example, in our Sociology Department we have a colleague that teaches sociology of deviance. Inevitably we hear students in our classes discussing what they are learning in the deviance course (where they cover the research in Tearoom Trade). Learning interesting things about people and groups seems to be more direct when doing field research (like how Humphreys discovered that tearooms utilize a third person to serve as a lookout, or “watchqueen”). Whereas surveys and aggregate data are important tools for describing people and populations, and experiments allow us to generalize to theoretical principles, field research puts researchers front and center in observing people in their natural habitats.
Field research is quite broad in what can be studied as well as how it is studied. Researchers Lofland and Lofland (1995) looked at several elements of life that field research can illuminate including practices (behaviors), episodes (events like crime, divorce, illness), encounters between people, role associations with the positions people occupy, relationships, groups, organizations, or subcultures. These elements of life are often difficult to quantify using survey or aggregate data. At the same time, these elements lend themselves to careful study by field researchers because they deal with the process of social interactions. Field researchers spend time watching how interactions within groups, relationships, or organizations take place. Field research is unparalleled in bringing to the fore a rich, descriptive account of how these things happen.
Because many people see themselves as natural observers, it is sometimes difficult to explain why it takes skill to do field research. What is there to learn about observing others when you have been doing that your whole lives? Isn’t observation intuitive? When deciding to do field research, there are a variety of hurdles to overcome just in selecting a topic and entering into the field—much less how data is collected once in the field and then how the data are organizaed and prepared for analysis. We begin with how to think about preparing to do field research by selecting an appropriate topic.
Because field research takes place in a setting teeming with a variety of people and interactions, it seems to carry a more glamorous status as a research design than something like aggregate data. Studies on rock music groupies, street gangs, wives of NBA players, impersonal sexual activity, and/or Star Trek devotees also seem to make field research more trendy than scientific. While these topics are certainly interesting, there are only so many studies you can do looking at these types of groups.
As social scientists, one of the questions that should be asked prior to beginning field research is how relevant the topic is. Is the topic being selected because it is glamorous, rather than because the topic contributes to the larger scientific literature? For example, a graduate student decides that she and her husband have been part of the “swingers” subculture (a group of husbands and wives who meet to switch sexual partners) and decides that studying swingers will make a good field research project. Although the graduate student may have unprecedented access to a group of swingers, dozens of studies have been done on the swingers’ culture. Is she choosing this topic because it will add to the scientific literature, or is she choosing this project simply because it is convenient? Of course a second question would be whether or not she could maintain her objectivity as someone studying her own group. Can she report on this subculture without her own biases getting in the way?
Selecting a relevant research topic requires thoughtfulness. Has anyone done previous scientific study on this particular group/organization/interaction/relationship/episode/subculture? Topics can be chosen responsibly by selecting research questions that illuminate an element of life we need to know more about. There is a balance to be struck in doing this. Many studies have been done on new religious movements (NRMs), for example, yet what if there is a burgeoning religious movement that seems to be doing something different from previous movements? Is studying this movement redundant, or will studying the movement add to current scientific knowledge? In looking at the academic literature pertaining to the group, we find that little to nothing has been written regarding this group, except in the popular press or by the group’s proponents and detractors. Studying this NRM would then be a relevant choice. Drawing from previous studies on NRMs, there would be a sense of the appropriate strategies to use for the research. At the same time, however, how the NRM uniquely adds to present religious knowledge makes the study relevant.
The key to selecting a relevant topic for field research is in clearly defining the topic when going into the field. Once in the field a clear topic guides what will be observed, as well as how it will be observed. It is not uncommon for field researchers to enter the field and be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data they are observing. Without clearly defined reasons for going into the field, researchers can quickly become lost in the sea of interactions they are observing. Going back to the research plan keeps the research on track, ensuring that the data coming out of the field are the data that were intended to be collected.
Another hurdle in selecting a topic is assessing the accessibility of the individuals, groups, or process being studied. Many people, groups, sites, and/or activities are not available for scientific observation; sometimes this is counterintuitive. In religion research, the expectation is that traditional American religious groups would be the most open to being studied, whereas NRMs would be the least likely to grant access to researchers. The opposite, however, is often more true; mainstream religious organizations sometimes refuse to grant permission for outsiders to study their organizations. Often NRMs give social researchers unprecedented access to study them (see Barker’s 1984 study on the Unification Church in Britain).
As we noted in Chapter 4, getting permission from the group is usually the most ethical way to proceed with research. Overt observation (being out in the open about being a researcher) allows the researcher to observe in good conscience—everyone knows that they are being observed. In some cases, however, it is permissible to seek degrees of covert observation, where the group is not aware of the researcher’s true aim to study the group. One example of this is when Lofland and Stark (1965) decided to study religious conversion taking place (see also Lofland 1966; Stark and Finke 2000). After sifting through a number of “deviant” religious groups in the San Francisco Bay area, Lofland and Stark chose a small group that had recently relocated from Oregon to San Francisco. The religious group was led by a former professor of religion from Seoul, South Korea. The Reverend Kim and her group of followers were the first members in the United States of the Unification Church (also known as the “Moonies”).
Not knowing how long the process of conversion would take, Lofland and Stark did not want to disrupt the group by introducing themselves as social researchers. The researchers sought permission from Reverend Kim to conduct field research without alerting the other group members to their status as social researchers. They were given permission to study the group and subsequently published one of the first scientific studies of the process of religious conversion. Lofland and Stark found that religious conversion was a product of social network ties; those most likely to convert to the new religious group were those most socially connected to the group. The first converts to the group had all been friends prior to joining the church. When Lofland and Stark began studying the new group, they found the group had not yet succeeded in attracting any strangers—of the people drawn to the group, the only ones who joined were those whose social network ties to the group outbalanced those without (Stark and Finke 2000). By choosing a different degree of covert research, Lofland and Stark discovered a process of religious conversion that has stood the test of time (see also Kox, Meeus, and t’Hart 1991; Stark and Finke 2000).
When permission has been obtained for the field research, a determination needs to be made as to how much access a researcher is given. A group being observed may initially want to steer the researcher to particular members of the group, hoping that the researcher observes the best parts of the group. This, of course, will give a biased view of the group. Researchers must make sure that they have access to the full variety of individuals, rituals, practices, interactions, and so on, within the group in order to get the broadest possible view of the group. Researchers need to maximize their access. When studying religious groups, it is helpful to get a list of those who have left the group, as well as those who participate, in order to understand mechanisms through which members choose to leave. By having observed both current and former members of a group, a fuller picture of the group emerges. Having access to the group being studied is necessary; it can also be something more elusive than expected.
Several years ago McKinney was involved with a research group where members reviewed each other’s work in progress. While reviewing one of the research projects, an interesting conundrum presented itself. Another participant had proposed an exciting project dealing with an unusual religious group that blended traditional native religious practices with traditional Christian practices. While the researcher did some background work on the group by observing the group’s public festivals, he also gained knowledge of the group by way of an informant (someone who had insider information about the group). Based on the researcher’s interest in studying the group, the background research he had done (through public news reports, etc.), along with what he had learned from the informant, he began to set up the project. Several months later, however, the researcher discovered that the group had previously approved guidelines for people seeking to study them. The researcher’s informant had been unaware of these guidelines, leaving the researcher to wait for permission to get full access to the group. At the research group’s last meeting, the researcher had to report that he had still not been able to get permission, and thus access, to the group he had hoped to study.
Having negotiated for full access to the group is a beginning point to field research. One pitfall sometimes encountered in doing field research is censorship. Oftentimes unwittingly, those within the group may seek to censor what a researcher reports. It is imperative for social researchers to walk the line between being part of the group and yet being apart from the group, keeping in mind at all times his or her place in the group as a researcher. Even in overt research, over time those that are being observed come to see the researcher as a part of the group—in effect, the researcher becomes just one more piece of furniture in the life of the group (something that’s there but benign). This is a good outcome; as the researcher becomes more familiar to them, group members interact normally. Group members may, however, ask the researcher to describe what he or she is recording, how the person perceives the group, and/or what he or she is concluding about the group. Not everyone in the group may see themselves and their group as the researcher—the outsider—does. They may ask the researcher to revisit or revise conclusions. Researchers sometimes make hard decisions to report what they believe they see and experience, rather than appease the group members by painting a less than accurate picture of the group. When researchers enjoy relationships with the individuals or groups they are studying, it can be difficult to disappoint them by reporting less than flattering observations. Part of being a researcher, however, is to have integrity in what gets reported. Researchers need to report honestly and accurately what they have seen, heard, and experienced, even if it is unpopular with the group being studied.
One way to avoid the pressure of censorship is to ensure that researchers have independent funding for the research (funding not provided by the group being studied). Many social researchers are university faculty. In order to do long-term projects they need funding to help with travel costs, buying time off their university position, and so on. Sometimes groups being studied offer to defray the costs of research by providing compensation. While it seems generous for the group to offer research funding, it can be problematic. What happens when the group asks to see a researcher’s preliminary report only to find that the objective researcher has accurately pinpointed both group strengths and weaknesses? What if the group then asks the researcher to modify his or her results? The financial pressure may impact what the final report/research describes, disqualifying it from being objective science.
When researchers vie for maximizing access to the group, they also need to obtain independent funding. Both of these allow the data to come unfiltered to the researcher, avoiding the pitfalls of organizational censorship, either through limiting the researcher’s access to different areas of the group or through financial pressure to report what is more flattering to the group.
One last hurdle to consider before undertaking field research is to evaluate how much and what type of risks might be involved in doing the research—for the researcher and the subjects. We’ve mentioned that researchers need to consider thoughtfully whether they are going into the field overtly or covertly. For either option, are there risks involved in doing the research, from who or what is being studied, or what the researcher is learning? Recall the Humphreys’s Tearoom Trade study, where Humphreys participated as a watchqueen, choosing to study the tearoom subculture as a covert researcher. In the course of his research he was picked up by the police and jailed. Since he was a covert researcher, he could not risk telling the police who he was and what he was doing for fear of either losing his contacts in the tearoom subculture (by outing himself) or by being pressed into informing on his subjects to the police, who may have taken his data and used it to shut down the tearooms. Another risk Humphreys took lay in the nature of the group he was studying. One day while acting as watchqueen, Humphreys and several men in the tearoom were set upon when a “gang of ruffians” came into the tearoom, locked the door, and physically assaulted the men participating in the tearoom activity (Humphreys 1975).
Just because a researcher takes the high road and goes into a study as an overt social researcher, some activities are not protected and still involve risks. An example of overt research taking an unexpected turn for the researcher is the case of Rik Scarce. He was a graduate student at Washington State University conducting field research on radical environmental movements. In the course of his research, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists raided a laboratory at Washington State University. Being known on campus as someone studying radical environmental movements, Scarce was approached by federal prosecutors who believed he had interviewed the people involved in the laboratory raid. When Scarce refused to answer some of the prosecutor’s questions on the basis of both his First Amendment rights and the American Sociological Association’s ethical guidelines (which stipulate that confidentiality must be maintained by researchers even if legal force is applied (ASA 1999: 3 cited by Lee-Treweek and Linkogle 2000:18), he was jailed for 159 days. Scarce reports that his release came only after the judge in the case realized he would not betray the promises of confidentiality made to his research participants, effectively preventing him from revealing whether or not he had interviewed particular activists (Lee-Treweek and Linkogle 2000; Scarce 2005a, 2005b).
Unlike journalists who have precedence for protecting their sources, social scientists are not given the same consideration. As Scarce (2005a:B24) noted in an article advocating legal protection for social scientists, “The lack of a federal shield law prompts social scientists to limit their assurances of confidentiality to research participants for fear of going to jail. As a result, we practice self-censorship, deliberately restricting the topics we study. Absent a shield law, it takes a brave scholar to conduct in-depth interviews with, for example, polygamous fundamentalist Mormons or violent inner-city drug dealers.” While researchers abide by their professional codes of ethics and maintain their integrity in the face of betraying confidential information on their subjects, doing so may result in risky and unintended consequences. In undertaking field research, researchers must entertain all possibilities of where the research may take them, including the possibility of their “going native.”
Part of the rights of passage for graduate students getting ready to do field research are the stories that abound about “going native” or becoming so involved in participating in field research that the researcher loses objective perspective. One popular urban myth that makes the graduate student rounds is about a graduate student doing field research in the local college town’s prostitution scene. The story goes that she became so empathetic with the prostitutes she studied, that she began taking tricks with them on the street. One night, after not coming home, her roommate contacted the police, who subsequently found her dead—from a pimp who thought she was encroaching on his territory. Of course this was an urban myth. No such study and no such graduate student existed. The myth was designed to scare graduate students into thinking about the risks involved in doing field research. In the latter respect, however, the myth is useful. Is there a risk that researchers may become so involved in their research that they are unable to maintain the appropriate objectivity in order to do the study as a social scientist, and not as a group member? These issues related to risk—as an overt researcher, covert researcher, and by going native—are important to consider before entering into the field.
Once researchers have clearly defined and relevant research questions, have maximized access to the group, and have addressed the potential risks involved in the research, they are then able to enter into the field. As we noted previously, the best case scenario for a field researcher is to go into the field as an overt researcher—allowing those being observed to know they are being observed. The trick to doing this is to be aware of the Hawthorne effect—where people behave differently when they know they are being observed.
If you have ever traveled to a culture that is significantly different than your culture of origin, you probably have studied some of the different cultural norms (for example, driving or walking on the left side of the street/sidewalk when in Britain). As prepared as you are, there are usually some surprises when you arrive in the new culture. Researchers who have done their homework and selected an appropriate topic and place to conduct their field work will find the same dynamic. In order to compensate for their entry into the field and the disruption that may cause, researchers expect to spend a significant amount of time in the field.
A general rule for a field researcher is to be in the field for a significant amount of time (typically two years). Recognizing that the people you observe will react differently than usual to being observed, researchers should go into the field expecting to neutralize their effect. Neutralizing observer effects entails allowing the research subjects to gradually get used to having an observer among them. Part of neutralizing observer effects includes having researchers keep a low profile as they move into the field. Keeping a low profile helps researchers in two ways: it allows them to establish themselves as a fixture within the group while affording them the ability to observe the group’s norms, interactions, and language. Within several months, those who are being observed will return to their normal interactions, having gotten used to having the researcher in their midst. Having used the initial entry time into the group to learn more about the group, the researcher is then armed with a more thorough understanding of the group’s cultural norms and interactions, to begin the more formal observation.
Field research is unique in a variety of ways, including the fact that it is where you go, rather than what you do. Now that the researcher is ready to begin to collect observations, how does he or she do that? Two keys to collecting data in the field are qualitative interviewing and field notes. Field notes are the primary form the data take. While researchers conduct their field work, they are constantly taking in information. These observations should be recorded as soon as possible. In some types of field research, it is easy for researchers to carry around their field notes—with a laptop, recorder, smart phone, or simply pen and paper. In many cases, however, field researchers need to learn how to catalog information systematically by memory in order to be physically recorded at a later time.
Field notes are composed, much of the time, with the results of qualitative interviews. Qualitative interviews are unique in that they are significantly less structured than quantitative interviews. Often there is a general plan for the type of data a researcher is collecting, but without specific questions and/or without a specific time table for collecting the data. Some field research has a more structured interview process, for example, McKinney collaborated with a colleague to interview postbaccalaureate students undertaking year-long ministry internships to see how the internship experience impacted their vocational aspirations (did participating in the internship reinforce their desire to work in ministry, did it diminish their desire to work in ministry, etc.). For this field work, each intern answered a semistructured set of questions. McKinney and Drovdahl (2007) fashioned a set of questions that targeted three areas of vocational discernment to learn how internship experiences impacted interns’ sense of themselves, the skills they brought to the internship/skills they learned from the internship, and their future vocations. For many field researchers, however, this level of structure is too narrow for the scope of their research. Much of the practice of qualitative interviewing relies on the researcher’s dexterity in crafting unscripted moments to collect data.
In many cases, field researchers keep in mind that much of their interviewing appears as if they are simply interacting with a respondent in a casual conversation. Qualitative interviewing takes great skill and practice. Researchers need to be subtle in how they elicit information and flexible in directing their inquiries. Even for skillful interviewers it is often the case that someone being interviewed veers off topic. Field researchers can try to subtly direct the conversation to get back on course; however, if the researcher is too directive, the subject’s recognition that he or she is talking to a “researcher” might kick in, inhibiting or truncating responses.
When doing these informal conversations, researchers are asking questions, listening to the answers, and interpreting what they hear. These data are then recorded as field notes. Field notes are the careful and systematic recording of what the researcher observes during field work. When recording observations, field researchers write down specific and detailed accounts of what they are observing. Not only do researchers record what they actually observed, they also record what they think they observed, or the interpretation of how they characterize what their observations mean in the context of the group.
Recording field notes requires skill and self-discipline. Observations should be recorded as soon as possible and as thoroughly as possible. Field researchers are inundated with data—trying to rely on memory and putting off recording observations can result in lost data. As the data are recorded, researchers are also interpreting what the data mean. Are there connections to larger concepts or between events? Researchers attach meaning to what may seem obvious but should be anticipated. For example, are women or men more likely to participate in an activity; are there stratification systems around gender, race, age, and so on.
By keeping careful field notes, the organizing and analysis of the data become more streamlined. Social scientists are interested in finding patterns across events. As they attend to interpreting their experience in the field and recording their notes, researchers coming out of the field have more focus. Remember, researchers should go into the field with a clear vision of why they are going; it will make organizing and analyzing findings much easier.
Whereas the data garnered through field research are unsurpassed in providing data on what people actually do in real life, there are some issues that may impact the data’s reliability. The first issue is from deception. Deception within field research takes on two forms, deception through the researcher (when he or she chooses to be covert) and deception through the subjects.
Field researchers are usually the lone researcher in the field; thus no one else is equipped to evaluate what the researcher has actually observed in the field. By the reporting of intricate rituals and processes the researcher presents, we tend to assume the data are valid, but are they reliable—or true? There is pressure in the academic world to find new or unusual practices or elements of life, which can lead researchers to embellish their findings. We live in a “publish or perish” environment. Because we have no other authority with which to compare the field researcher’s findings, how would we know if researchers are misrepresenting what they observed?
One controversial study of the Yanomami people in the Amazon region characterized them as one of the most violent cultures ever studied. Napoleon Chagnon’s (1977) anthropological work on the Yanomami people found that a significant percentage of the adults in the group had a relative that had been murdered. When Chagnon would ask how many people each man had killed, the subjects responded with astoundingly high numbers. The numbers of killings the Yanomami reported, however, were disproportionately high. It turns out the Yanomami believe they can kill others with a curse. Therefore when people they did not like died, a Yanomami man might claim he had killed his “enemy” due to a curse (and many Yanomami might claim the killing of the same person). Thus in reporting, did Chagnon misrepresent the culture? Other researchers that later studied the Yanomami painted a very different picture of the culture (Peters 1998, Tierney 2002). Tierney (2002) reports that when Chagnon collected his data, he often misrepresented himself (for example, by lying or being unclear with how or why he was collecting data). Having multiple researchers study the same group gives a broader picture of the group. In doing field researcher, however, having several accounts of one group may not always be an option.
Another form of reliability bias that can occur is through the use of informants. While informants—people connected to the group who can provide insider information—can be very useful, they can also be misleading. Informants are often assumed to be well informed, thus their appellation. While they can give general information about the group, you need to ask the question of why they would be willing to give you insider information about the group, especially if the information is sensitive or secretive. Is the informant placed strategically within the group, with access to the information they claim to have, or is the informant willing to inform on the group because they are somewhat marginal to it? Informants are useful, but field researchers need to assess the position and access the informant may or may not have. We described a researcher earlier in the chapter who relied on an informant during the preliminary study of a religious group. He (and we suspect the informant) were then surprised to find that the group had rules governing research on the group. Clearly, the informant was not so integral to the group that he was aware of these rules. Information obtained from an informant should be used thoughtfully and judiciously.
Generalizing from field studies can also be problematic. Data obtained in the field are detailed and important, describing processes that no other research design can describe. These detailed data are a great strength of field research; it is also a weakness in that it makes the findings limited in generalizability. First, generalizing within the group should be done using proportional facts. Using descriptors like “the majority,” “most,” “few,” and “typically” should be backed up by the data. Did the researcher take a census of the whole group in order to make a generalization that “most” of them did a certain task? While using proportional statistics is helpful for readers, researchers need to make sure that the statistic is reflected by a careful accounting of the data.
Invalid generalizations are a second generalizability issue. Invalid generalizations occur when trying to generalize to groups that were not studied. Let’s say we wanted to do a study of Girl Scout troops and the strategies they used to mobilize their annual cookie drive. We could spend several years observing how local Girl Scout troops do this and then publish our findings. There would be a tendency subsequently to generalize our findings to all Girl Scout troops. That generalization would be invalid, however, since we can only generalize to the groups we actually observed. Field research does not involve any type of relevant population or probability sampling; thus we are unable to take our findings and apply or generalize them to other groups, no matter how similar they may seem. Our findings will inform other researchers who seek to study similar groups, but we (and they) cannot assume our findings describe any group other than the ones specifically studied in the course of the field research.
Field research is both exploratory and descriptive. We tend to assume that the great detail described within field research reflects what the researcher actually found. Since the concepts and patterns described by a field researcher are so rich in detail, we tend to assume that they are valid—that they are measuring what they say they are measuring. This rich, descriptive data provide a window into social life that is unsurpassed by other research designs. Because field researchers get “up close and personal” with people, there are some ethical considerations we need to highlight for this particular research design.
As a brand-new graduate student at the University of Chicago, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh became involved with the gang subculture in the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago’s south side. For the next seven years, Venkatesh immersed himself in the gang culture that regulated much of the daily life within the public housing complex. With the publication of his third book, Gang Leader for a Day, Venkatesh (now a Columbia University sociology professor) received some backlash on his “ambivalent” stance regarding ethical concerns raised by his field research (Carr 2009; see also Charles 2009; Clampet-Lundquist 2009, Venkatesh 2008; Young 2009).
While his field research encompassed a variety of issues related to daily life in the Robert Taylor Homes housing projects, the majority of Venkatesh’s account in Gang Leader for a Day deals with the relationship he developed with J.T., a leader with the Black Kings gang in the housing project. As Venkatesh (2008:29) reports, “It was pretty thrilling to have a gang boss calling me up to go hang out with him.” The adrenaline rush of being afforded such unparalleled access to this culture is understandable. What comes into question, however, is Venkatesh’s ability to maintain his objectivity while he participated within the gang culture (as denoted by the book’s title, Venkatesh was given the opportunity to be a gang leader for a day).
As a participant-observer, Venkatesh readily admits that he became a “hustler,” someone trying to get ahead by getting something from others. One of his critics notes how Venkatesh’s hustling had consequences—not just for his ability to maintain objectivity, but also for his ability to maintain confidentiality for his research subjects (Clampet-Lundquist 2009). As part of his research, Venkatesh learned about some of the other “hustling” going on in the projects—off-the-books ways members of the community earned money. As part of the daily operations of the gang, J.T. and the Black Kings took a “tax” on all money-earning activities. Venkatesh consulted with J.T. and another member of the community about other participants’ hustles, breaking the other participants’ confidentiality. Venkatesh’s “fact-checking” came with a cost to those who had not revealed to the gang that they were earning money—money not “taxed” by the gang (Charles 2009; Clampet-Lundquist 2009).
Apart from keeping scientific objectivity and subject confidentiality, a third concern pertaining to Venkatesh’s research is his ability (or inability) to overcome his preconceptions about the culture he was engaging. Charles (2009:209) writes that Venkatesh does not discuss “the importance of his preconceived attitudes and beliefs and tendency to adhere to negative racial stereotypes.” She writes that for someone immersed in this gang culture, Venkatesh should have understood his own biases. Consider, for example, Venkatesh’s (2008:248) expectations regarding attending a gang party: “I had envisioned half-naked women sitting poolside and rubbing the bosses with sunscreen while everyone passed around marijuana joints and cold beer.” Did Venkatesh’s preconceived ideas impact his ability to see and interpret what was going on within this particular subculture?
Doing social research is complex. As Charles (2009:209) notes regarding Venkatesh’s research, “Despite claims that we check our preconceptions at the door when we do our jobs, social science researchers are human. Like everyone else, our attitudes and beliefs are shaped . . . by our own experiences in the world.” This statement is true for all social science research, but when dealing so closely with individuals as we do in field research, we must be more conscious of our impact on these individuals. Three issues that are particularly salient to ethical practices in field research are the issues of privacy, deception, and participant-observation.
In the process of doing field research, we learn things that violate others’ privacy. One key ethical concern for researchers is to take care to protect the names, people, and places where their field research occurs. For Venkatesh’s participants, their privacy was violated when he made their information (“hustling”) available to other members of the community. Researchers must take great care to protect the people we study. Like any field researcher, Venkatesh was hustling—getting information from people in order to complete his own research agenda; this is what we do. There is usually very little gain for people participating in social research, while researchers earn advanced degrees and/or prestige by publishing our findings. Because we are sometimes hustlers, it is imperative that we offer as much privacy and protection as possible for our subjects.
One way to do this is to carefully disguise when, where, and who we study. For example, in a study (1997) analyzing intake interviews with homeless clients in a large city, the account included in the publication made every effort to disguise who these clients (and social workers) were. The description included in the publication noted, “This research was conducted at a human service agency (hereinafter, Homeless Assistance, or HA) that served homeless persons in a midsized city in the southern United States (hereinafter, River City)” (Spencer and McKinney 1997:187). By generalizing to “HA” in “River City,” researchers tried to ensure that no one would be able to discern exactly what organization was studied, who the clients and social workers were, and in what city the research took place. These tactics maximized the privacy of those involved in the research, protecting them.
Another issue, related to protecting the privacy of those being studied, is the question of observing in public versus private spaces. The general rule in ethics is to obtain permission to observe whenever possible. But what if you want to observe interactions in public spaces? Public space is by definition open space. Can you simply go there to observe interactions without asking permission from the people you are observing? Is it ethical to talk/watch/record people if they do not know they are being observed? This is an unresolved debate within disciplines that utilize field research. It seems nearly impossible to get permission before the fact in many cases of public space observation. But we also need to remember that ethically, being upfront about what we as researchers are doing is the best practice.
Deception also plays a part in the ethical concerns of field research. In general we expect that deception should be limited. Choosing to do field research as an overt researcher is the best choice from an ethics perspective (although even when doing research openly, there is no guarantee that the researcher will not encounter a number of other ethically ambiguous areas). There are, however, cases where being a covert researcher is acceptable. When Lofland and Stark began their research into the Unification Church, they made the decision to study the NRM as covert researchers. Having no previous literature to guide them in determining approximately how long the religious conversion process could be, the researchers chose to use deception. By taking their case to the group’s leader, Reverend Kim, Lofland and Stark were able to gain access to the group with minimal disruption to the process of conversion they intended to study. Whenever deception is being employed in a study, it must be approved by an institutional review board (IRB). Being approved by an IRB allows the researcher to proceed with as many safeguards in place for participants as possible.
One very unique ethical concern for field researchers is their level of participation. When doing field research, it is common to enter into a group to experience their activities firsthand. While this allows researchers to get the detailed data and experience that we expect from this research design, it comes with costs. How might the researcher’s participation impact the overall activity or interaction among the group? Does the researcher’s participation endanger the integrity of the activity? Finally, can the researcher maintain objectivity when he or she spent so much time participating with the group? Note some of the critiques of Gang Leader for a Day. Based in his preconceived notions regarding the gang activity in a low-income housing project, and his excitement for living so closely with such a unique subculture, Venkatesh’s report of this subculture is called into question—did his participation impact his ability to remain objective? Did his participation change the daily activities within the culture (it did for those who had not reported their “hustling” income to the gang). When doing field research, social scientists are charged with being aware of their own biases, keeping to their objectivity, and protecting their participants.