ABSTRACT
Does survey research give breadth, while field research gives depth? Is field research no more than doing participant observation? Is participant observation a better method of doing research than interviewing? When such questions have been posed by researchers, they have received few answers and sharp criticism. Indeed, when Becker and Geer (1957) asserted that participant observation was superior to interviewing, they received a sharp rejoinder from Trow, who commented:
Let us be done with the arguments of ‘participant observation’ versus interviewing-as we have largely dispensed with the arguments for psychology versus sociology-and get on with the business of attacking our problems with the widest array of conceptual and methodological tools that we possess and they demand. This does not preclude discussion and debate regarding the relative usefulness of different methods for the study of specific problems or types of problems. But that is very different from the assertion of the general and inherent superiority of one method over another on the basis of some intrinsic qualities it presumably possesses. (Trow, 1957, p. 35)
Certainly, the coverage given to field research within this book suggests diversity of method, strategy and tactic. In these circumstances, the researcher has to consider ways in which different methods can be used and different data collected in order to address a variety of theoretical and substantive problems. Such a position points, as Wax (1971) suggests, to the disadvantages of rigidity and the advantages of flexibility in doing field research. The field researcher, is therefore, seen as a methodological pragmatist, who ‘sees any method of inquiry as a system of strategies and operations designed-at any time-for getting answers to certain questions about events which interest him’ (Schatzman and Strauss, 1973, p. 7). In short, the field researcher is concerned with operations that yield profound, meaningful and valid data.
