ABSTRACT
The original occasion for this chapter was a reflection on the use of sample survey methods in the field: that is, the use of structured interview schedules, probability samples, and so on, in what is usually thought of as a participant observation study. There has been a spirited controversy between, on the one hand, those who have sharply criticised fieldworkers for slipshod sampling, for failing to document assertions quantitatively, and for apparently accepting impressionistic accounts-or accounts that the quantitatively minded could not distinguish from purely impressionistic accounts;1 and, on the other hand, those who have, sometimes bitterly, been opposed to numbers, to samples, to questionnaires, often on the ground that they destroy the fieldworkers’ conception of a social system as an organic whole.2
