ABSTRACT
Field research takes place in social situations in which the researcher participates. Here, it is the task of the researcher to observe and record the life of the people as it occurs. However, in these circumstances selection is inevitable as field researchers need to define their field of study and to narrow the focus of their work. In these terms, researchers must continually decide when, where, what and whom to observe and interview. It is these aspects of field research that are crucial throughout the research process and will be the subject of consideration in this chapter. One of the main problems that confronts researchers working in the field has been neatly summarised by Naroll and Cohen (1973) who remark:
Unfortunately, the people do not have the responsibility of analyzing and categorizing their social and cultural experience and therefore cannot sort their own behaviour or responses to questions into neat packages for placement into a filing system or an analytical framework. (Naroll and Cohen, 1973, p. 9)
It is the focus upon natural settings which presents the field researcher with problems of selection and control over the data that are collected. Field researchers are therefore constantly having to select locations, time periods, events and people for study. The result is that while some elements of the situation and sections of the population are included in a study, others are excluded. It is this set of activities involving principles of selection that brings the field researcher directly up against a consideration of sampling. However, it is rare to find a systematic discussion of the principles of selection that were used in a particular study, as it is generally assumed that the ‘sample’ is broadly ‘representative’ of a larger universe of actions, events and people. Yet such a procedure automatically meets with objections concerning the representativeness of the units of study. Field researchers need, therefore, to defend their actions by discussing the principles by which they select some situations, events and people but reject others while working in the field.
