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For instance, knowing formal shorthand does not hurt, but most people are not interested in mastering that language. Some concoction of your own, similar to text-messaging or instant-messaging languages, will do—as long as you can read and interpret your own writing. Using abbreviations and acronyms is a must, but again be careful that you do not errantly use the same abbreviations or acronyms for two or more different concepts. Along the same vein, if you fall behind when taking notes, one suggestion is not to try to complete every sentence, but to start a new sentence even if you did not complete the previous one (Scanlan, 2000, p. 32). If you try to complete the previous one, you are not likely to hear the new one.

To overcome having too many incomplete sentences or too much fragmentation (if not confusion) in your notes, you should try to find some time to make quick fixes while you are still in the field. Find a quiet place between interviews or observations or during a break from the fieldwork and look for those incomplete

sentences or other fragments. Any fixes that you can make at this intermediate juncture will be much better than waiting until the end of the day.

Recommended, too, is to write small. You can get more words on a page—and you also can write faster—than if you emulate the elementary student’s broad-sized script with wrist and arm movements rather than only finger movements. Similarly, for nearly everyone, script is faster than printing.

A critical characteristic of the desired transcribing language is to be able to

distinguish (1) notes about others and external events from (2) notes to yourself. You will want to be able to make a brief note about what you have just heard or observed, but you need to separate your own comments clearly from the other notes. Using brackets or backslashes (and saving parentheses for true parenthetical

remarks), or reserving the marginal space for your comments alone, all will work. Other punctuation also can matter, especially in using quotation marks when you are able to quote directly what someone has said. As a result, as with abbreviations and acronyms, decide ahead of time the meaning of any of the punctuation or

other marks (e.g., checkmarks or x-marks) that you plan to use. Making a personal glossary for each of your studies would not hurt, either.

Like everything else, you need to practice your transcribing language. The main test will be whether you thought you took down everything that you wanted to and later, when you find out whether your notes are completely readable to yourself.

Creating Drawings and Sketches as Part of the Notes

Field notes also can include your own drawings or sketches. Such renditions are highly desirable supplements to your writing because the drawings will help you to keep track of certain relationships while you are still in the field, as well as to recall these relationships after you have completed your fieldwork.

The most obvious type of drawing would capture the spatial layouts of particular scenes. Moreover, creating such drawings does not require “language facility or a great deal of rapport with informants,” so the drawings can be rendered early during the fieldwork period (Pelto & Pelto, 1978, pp. 193–194).

The spatial scenes might include the spatial relationships between or among participants and not just the physical features of a landscape. Although you may have some artistic talent, do not become preoccupied with that talent. The idea is to sketch something quickly and to capture the scene, not to perfect a still-life drawing at the risk of neglecting the ongoing activities or discussions. For instance, you can quickly note and number the positions of participants at a group meeting, with the decoding to take place at some later time (see Exhibit 7.2).

Exhibit 7.2. Sketches in Field Notes

Field scenes may include group discussions or meetings. The group may be seated at a conference table (see below) or gathered informally. The fieldworker may not be introduced to the individuals; or, if introduced, may not remember all of their names. Then, conversations may begin (and notes need to be taken) before the fieldworker

has had a chance to get fully oriented.

A quick way of getting this recorded is to mark the seating positions and to assign numbers to each position. Later, as the discussion progresses or as a result of separate queries, the fieldworker can decode the seating positions with the names of the appropriate person. As an added benefit, the sketch also captures the relationships among the seating positions, which may reflect implicit social hierarchies or interpersonal relationships that could later turn out to be important.

As with your written notes as discussed in Section C, the only requirement for the clarity of the sketch is that you can later understand it yourself. (At that later time, if you are still enthralled with your artistic talent, you can expand the original sketch into a full-blown drawing.)

Besides rendering the physical and sociophysical features of particular scenes, drawings also can be helpful in capturing social relationships as represented by family trees and organizational charts. When the relationships are complex or numerous, the drawings can serve a useful orienting purpose while you are still in

the field.

C. Converting Field Notes into Fuller Notes

Preview—What you should learn from this section:

1. Using the time to convert notes as an opportunity to assess the progress you are making in your study.

2. Expanding on ideas when converting notes.

3. Reviewing notes for hints at verification needs.

The preceding note-taking practices pertain to notes taken during fieldwork or when actually doing an interview. These field notes will have been constrained by a shortness of time and attention because the main attention will have been devoted to doing the fieldwork or conducting the interview. As a result, these notes, sometimes considered “ jottings,” can be fragmentary, incomplete, or cryptic. The field notes therefore need to be revised and converted into a more formal set of notes that will eventually become part of your qualitative research study’s database.

Converting Field Notes Quickly

The main objective is to convert the field notes to fuller notes as soon after every field event as possible. On most occasions, the opportunity will arise at the end of every day, so at a minimum you should set aside a time slot to do the task. However, be ready to take advantage of opportunities that may arise during the middle of the day.

Although such a daily routine may at first appear to be highly demanding, most qualitative researchers have found that they enthusiastically look forward to it because the time also provides a chance to “collect one’s thoughts” and to reflect on what happened during the day. When pursuing interesting research questions, the reflections include potential discoveries and revelations that in some cases can be quite exciting.

If nothing else, the nightly reflections also present opportunities to think (or rethink) about the fieldwork plans for the next day. As previously discussed in Chapter 5 (Section A), fieldwork schedules and agendas for qualitative research are not likely to be tightly defined (as in doing the fieldwork for a survey), so each Ray may present some flexibility in arrangements. As a result, your nightly reflections can lead to new ideas about modifying your priorities for the next day.

Especially difficult in making such choices is whether you think you are getting anywhere in your study. You may feel that a given fieldwork day, upon later reflection, did not provide much useful information. Whether you should modify the priorities for the next day or stick to your original plans will always be a difficult call. On the one hand, you may indeed be wasting your time unless you make some change in direction; on the other hand, relevant social or institutional patterns in the field may not emerge until after several days of repetitive exposure. Patience being a virtue, you probably should not make hasty judgments and only consider altering your routine after some (unproductive) repetition already has taken place.

Minimum Requirement for the Daily Conversion of the Original Field Notes

There are many ways of converting the original field notes during the nightly routine. One essential step needs to be taken even if you do not have the time to make any other enhancements: You must write out any fragments, abbreviations, or other cryptic comments that you may not later understand. This requirement includes expanding or correcting sentences whose meanings are not absolutely clear. You also may have deliberately left question marks around certain portions of your original field notes because you knew you would try to interpret the meaning of the notes during this nightly routine.

No one should underestimate the importance of this minimum requirement. If you have taken a lot of class notes your whole life, you already will have suffered the embarrassing experience, as we all do, of not being able to decipher your own writing or (worse) of not being able to understand your own phrases or sentences that were written down at some earlier time. Moreover, the field experience is likely to have consisted of unfamiliar customs, language, and actions in comparison to your regular life, so the risk of later being unable to understand your own notes will be greater.

Four Additional Ways of Enhancing the Original Field Notes

Beyond the minimum requirement, you can enhance your original field notes in four other ways. First, reading your notes may stimulate you to recall additional details about the events observed or interviews conducted during the day. Feel free to add such embellishments, but put them down with a different writing instrument or separate symbolic code, so that you can later differentiate between the

original notes and the embellishments.

Second, you may have your own conjectures, interpretations, or comments about particular portions of the original field notes. Some of the comments may only be “loose end” reminders to yourself—that certain topics need to be examined more closely during your later field opportunities, for example. Such remind

ers do not need to be literally written onto the original notes but may be kept on a separate list that is then appended to the original notes.

Third, your review of the notes for the preceding day may suggest some emerging themes, categories, or even tentative solutions and answers related to your research questions. These ideas are clearly worth recording and can be connected to the specific portions or items in your notes that stimulated the ideas. By so doing, you also could be starting to anticipate some of the “codes” that will be used in your later analysis of your data (see Chapter 8, Section B).

Fourth, you should add the day’s notes, in some organized fashion, to your other field notes. The organized fashion should attempt to create some filing categories that go beyond simply keeping the notes in chronological order. The goal is to avoid having all of your notes, possibly from fieldwork as well as from the documents you have read, merely becoming part of an increasingly large “pile.” If you let your notes pile up, you are leaving yourself open to a highly frustrating experience at the end of your fieldwork.

Deepening Your Understanding of Your Fieldwork

This nightly period for expanding your original field notes offers great substantive opportunities and value. You should be clarifying your own understanding of what is going on in the field. The clarification can involve a wide range of items, from particular details to new conjectures related to your original research questions. Such advantages will be lost if you only think of the task as a transcription task of

“remembering and getting it down” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 63).

Any clarifying thoughts can have a pragmatic value: identifying loose ends that need additional fieldwork. Exhibit 7.3 contains a sample of such loose ends from a study of school “reform”—efforts to improve schools in some fundamental way by simultaneously reorganizing curricula, daily schedules, the recruitment

and training of teachers, and family and parent involvement—so that students will learn more effectively. Each example in the exhibit shows how some portion of the notes revealed the need to collect additional evidence in the ongoing fieldwork.

Verifying Field Notes

The nightly reviews of field notes also give you an opportunity to cover a methodologically important step occasionally overlooked in doing qualitative research: verifying the data being collected. Examining the notes and records from this perspective, while fieldwork is still ongoing, provides opportunities to tighten your

data collection (see “ ‘Checking Stuff,’ ” Vignette 7.3). In addition, from another perspective, the verification activities may be considered to be the beginning of analyzing your data.

Many types of verification will be relevant. For instance, key points in your notes that you think may lead to important findings deserve to be rechecked, possibly repeatedly (Pelto & Pelto, 1978, p. 194). As another example, the credibility of every interviewee should not be assumed but also deserves some verification effort (Becker, 1958).

Exhibit 7.3. Sample Items Needing Further Field Clarific ation, as Revealed during Nightly Review of Field Notes
Sample item	Illustrative example from a study of school reform
Factual details about key informants	Notes suggest that interviewee had not served as a teacher before becoming a district superintendent; need to confirm this biographical item, as it may explain some insensitivities in the superintendent’s new reform policies.
Co-location of an elementary and a middle school	Field visit had been to an elementary school, but school building seemed also to contain older-looking students; need to check whether building also contains a middle school, which could complicate reform activities.
Salience of reform vision	Rereading of notes suggests that most of the school interviewees participated in reform activities but were unaware of the broader vision that encompassed the activities; need to check whether interviewees think they are a part of a broader reform effort.
Attendance in teachers’ workshops	School is dominated by Hispanic students and has a good proportion of Spanish-speaking teachers, but major reform activity involving teachers’ workshops only appears to be offered in English; need to ask whether all teachers attend workshops, or whether Spanish-speaking teachers tend not to attend because workshops do not offer enough Spanish to help them work with their students.

VIGNETTE 7.3. “Checking Stuff”

Doing empirical research means working with evidence and making sure, almost obsessively, about its accuracy. Duneier (1999) called this practice “checking stuff” in his study of sidewalk vendors in New York City. He points out several kinds of checks as part of an extensive methodological appendix—itself another sign of sound

research procedures.

First, Duneier felt more confident when the same events were told to him “over and over again in the context of different individual lives” (1999, p. 345). Second, he made deliberate attempts to obtain physical evidence to corroborate people’s stories—for example, seeing their welfare cards or written notices if they claimed to be on welfare (p. 346). In other cases, he deliberately sought out other people, such as family members, to confirm a person’s story.

All of this checking took time, and the relevant incidents only “occurred over a period of years [that] were chiefly a consequence of [his] being there over time” (1999, p. 346). Duneier’s approach reinforces the usefulness of conducting fieldwork over an extended period of time but also shows how “checking stuff” needs to be a routine part of that fieldwork. See also Vignette 10.6.

At a minimum, you would like to know that an interviewee actually was present at the time and place pertinent to her or his direct observations, rather than risking the possibility that the interviewee passed on to you others’ hearsay about those events.

Most important among the possible verifications, you may want to start comparing information from the different sources of evidence that became available during your fieldwork, to see whether you have been accumulating conflicting or complementary renditions of the same real-life happenings. Exhibit 7.4 contains

different examples of such verifications. Each example illustrates the verifications arising from a different combination of sources. Although the examples come from a study of a community partnership, they should readily evoke parallel instances for qualitative studies on other topics.

The examples in Exhibit 7.4 were deliberately chosen to represent completed verifications and to show how different sources can point to the same conclusion. However, an additional benefit of taking such a proactive stance with your notes and recordings at this early stage is that you again are likely to be in the midst of your fieldwork and data collection activities. You therefore have an opportunity to do some additional cross-checking if needed. You may not have such an opportunity at a later date.

Exhibit 7.4. Illustrative Types of Verific ations between Different Sources of Field Evidence
Sample combination of sources	Illustrative example from a study of a community partnership
Between interviews with different people	Interviewees at one of the partnering organizations indicate the difficulty of relationships with another of the partnering organizations; interviewees at the other organization independently cite the same difficulties
Between interview and documentary evidence	Interviewees all say that the partnership began in 1995, and key documents also show the partnership forming at that time, with no trace of any partnership at an earlier date
Between interviews and observational data	The partnership appears to be supported by an outside organization that is not part of the partnership; field observations at the partnership’s office reveal signage and a directory confirming the existence of this other organization, and interviews confirm the overlapping of officers between the partnership and this organization
Between different documentary sources	A local news article under a reporter’s by-line uses independent data to assess one of the partnership’s major initiatives and its apparent benefits; the conclusions appear to agree with those from a totally separate study by a local university professor
Between two fieldworkers (if the study involves a research team)	Fieldworkers query each other about having heard a common interviewee admit to wanting to move on to another job; each fieldworker remembers the same words having been said

D. Recording Data through Modes Other Than Writing

Preview—What you should learn from this section:

1. The advantages and disadvantages of using other modes of recording field events, besides note taking.

2. Permissions to record and permissions to show recordings, when using other modes of recording.

3. Types of qualitative studies using other modes of recording as their main data collection technique.

Written notes, including associated sketches, have dominated the discussion thus far. Yet, field events can be recorded through multiple modes, not just in what is written down. The prominent modes primarily make use of recording devices and include audiotaping, videotaping, and taking pictures.

These devices can create invaluable by-products because they represent literal replicas of field events, given the obvious caveat regarding the selectivity in deciding when, where, and what to record (Fetterman, 2009, pp. 564–572). At the same time, using these devices can entail major complications that can outweigh the

value of the products.

Every researcher needs to make her or his own decision about the appropriate balance between the complications and the added value. One possible practice, followed by many experienced researchers, is to rely mainly on written notes and only to use recording devices under special circumstances. Thus, rather than audiotaping every interview, these researchers might consider audiotaping only a specific interview that is likely to be lengthy or critical. However, in other situations, such as the videotaping of classroom behavior discussed at the end of this section, using a recording device is intrinsic to the entire data collection process.

Nevertheless, the potential complications are sufficiently strong that you need to proceed with caution. These complications are discussed next.

Obtaining Permission to Record

To begin with, using recording devices of any sort requires you to obtain the permission of those who are to be recorded. The simplest request might occur when audiotaping. Just before an interview starts, many researchers note that they say something like, “do you mind if I record this conversation?” If the participant has

no objection and the researcher is adept at using the recording device, it is placed at an appropriate spot and turned on. The interview proceeds, and the intrusiveness of the device can be minimal.

Making visual recordings, either with a videotape or a camera, presents a slightly different situation. Even if the recording does not focus on any particular participant or conversation—as in recording people at work or school children at play—some sort of permission is still required. A person in authority needs to approve, and in some situations the approval may have to be obtained in writing.

A golden rule is to understand that, regardless of the situation, all researchers should make sure that they have secured permission from some relevant person to make any specific recording. Without gaining such permission, trouble is bound to arise later. The topic also should have been part of the human subjects approval

procedure discussed previously in Chapter 2, Section E.

Mastering Recording Devices before Using Them

Nothing is more distracting than the interruption caused when a recording device malfunctions while in use. For instance, such malfunctions of an audio recorder can potentially offset the cherished rapport you might have established with a participant. The participant may even (silently) question whether you know what you

are doing—possibly extending this doubt into your substantive questions (the logic is as follows: If you didn’t prepare sufficiently to know how your own recording device functions or might malfunction, how much preparation went into the questions you are posing?).

Everyone is aware of the typical embarrassments suffered when travelers report being at a historic scene or experiencing a precious moment—and a recording device malfunctioned, often for want of a charged battery. Beyond such malfunctions, sloppy handling of recording devices can call undesirable attention to use of

the device, diverting attention away from the substance of a discussion or observation.

The essential familiarity with a device also means knowing that it will work properly and produce the expected output. In too many instances researchers have thought they had successfully made audio- or videotapes, only to find later that the quality of the tapes was too poor, making the tapes unusable. Typically, an audiotape’s recording may turn out to be too faint, or pertinent conversations are later found to have been drowned out by some unnoticed background noise. Similarly, videotapes and photos may later be discovered to be out of focus, to have insufficient lighting, or to suffer from some backlight that was ignored during the photo

opportunity.

A final point about using recording devices pertains to those devices that are not part of your study. Be sure that these other devices, such as a cell phone or a beeper, are turned off when you are doing your fieldwork. At least one field researcher has reported how his beeper buzzed just at a critical point in a field interview, thereby changing the mood of the entire interview (Rowe, 1999, p. 9).

Sharing the Recordings and Maintaining Their Security

Once a recording device has been successfully used, the resulting tape or photo raises new questions. Displaying any of this material publicly again requires written permission from the persons or owners of the properties that were in the tape or photo. Participants also may ask to have their own copy of your material, and you will have to decide the conditions for granting or denying them your permission. Given the public’s ready use of Internet media for sharing recorded or taped information, the issues can become quite sticky quite fast.

Beyond deciding how the materials are to be shared is the question of how they will be stored and how their security will be maintained. Given the desired protection of human subjects, a major threat would result from any improper divulgence of the identities of the people or places in your fieldwork. As a result, you may have to have a plan for deleting such information before storing your records. This task is made more difficult by the information automatically stored as part of today’s digital photos and records.

Being Prepared to Spend Time Reviewing and Editing the Recordings

The successful recordings will help you to increase the precision of your fieldwork. They even may stimulate your own reminiscences of other happenings in the field that did not become part of the record, such as the facial expression or body language of an interviewee who had only been audiotaped.

Taking full advantage of these recordings will require their dedicated and systematic review. Such review may take a lot of time because recordings produce massive amounts of information. Moreover, unless you are skilled at randomly accessing various portions of audio- or videotapes, you will need to conduct your

review linearly, potentially making the process a tedious rather than stimulating one. Investing the needed time in this review process can have valuable payoffs. Make sure, however, that you intelligently anticipate the needed time before finally deciding whether to use any recording device in the first place.

When Electronic Recordings Are the Main Data Collection Technique

Notwithstanding all of the preceding complications, some qualitative research depends heavily on the use of recording devices. Major examples are studies of classroom behavior or work situations, where videotaping is the primary mode of data collection. The tapes capture both the actions and sounds of the classroom or work environments, enabling researchers to study instructional practices (in the classroom) or workers’ actions and interactions (in the workplace). As another example, a qualitative study might deal with the interactions between physicians and patients (e.g., Stewart, 1992).

Under these and similar circumstances where the recording device actually becomes the main data collection instrument, the fieldwork is likely to become formalized in at least two ways. First, specially skilled persons will be needed to make the recordings in the first place, to ensure their quality and later utility.

Second, analysis of the products is likely to require formal protocols to be used when later viewing the tapes (Erickson, 2006). For instance, studies based on conversation analysis are interested in going beyond the spoken words. Such studies need to develop a detailed set of symbols for coding conversants’ mannerisms such as pauses, pacing, intonations, and interruptions (Drew, 2009). The protocols also should cover the procedures for conducting reliability checks—for example, by having two or more viewers make their own coding or scoring of the tapes (e.g., Hall, 2000). The videotapes can be paused at specific frames, so that the research

can hone in on the finest details. At the same time, a video camera has many limitations compared to the human eye, and the camera will not capture what human observers actually see (Roschelle, 2000).

Interestingly, the lead researchers in these studies may still take their own written notes, while the action is taking place and being recorded. Now the written notes assume a more casual role because the recording device is producing the actual data.

Producing Finished Products

Many people, yourself included, may think of using the outputs from the recording devices (e.g., a photo or a segment of a videotape or audiotape) as part of their professional presentations. Photos also can appear in final manuscripts and publications (e.g., Brubaker, Feischmidt, Fox, & Grancea, 2006; Pedraza, 2007), as also discussed in Chapter 10, Section B.

When you are considering such presentations, you might also heed a word of caution. Because nearly everyone has been exposed to high-quality visual media, the audience is likely not to appreciate a visual (or audio) product that only has a “homemade” quality. Poor visual products might even detract from what otherwise might be an excellent study. An obvious response to this problem is to reference and encourage the use of increasingly easy-to-use digital editing software (e.g., Fetterman, 2009, p. 571). Such software can substantially improve your product. Highly polished visual images are especially found in education studies, where researchers commonly present visual images of the interactions between a teacher and a student, or among students or teachers alone.

The caution is this: Overediting the visual or audio images potentially distorts the images in their representation as qualitative data. As a result, especially when the editing has produced a genuinely high-quality

product, the risk is that the “scene” will be interpreted as not fully representing a fully spontaneous or authentic

rendition. Overediting also can lead to other suspicions. For instance, audiences might not simply accept that editing was the only intervention; they might now wonder whether the depicted teachers or students were coached to look into (or to look away from) a camera, to make the final product more appealing.

Given these possibilities, you may want to consider not doing any editing and clearly stating the absence of such editing, when (especially digital) images are presented. To make the images as attractive as possible, the challenge then would be to do the original recording with skillful techniques, so that the final product is presentable without any editing. From a photographer’s perspective, the goal would be

to produce a high-quality but still candid image of the reality being studied.