4– Writing Fieldnotes

Chapter 4 provides a method for observations and writing fieldnotes as primary

source material.

“Hey, what are you writing in that notebook?”

“Why do you want to know that?”
“Put the pen down, you’re supposed to be bowling. Come on, you’re up.”
During your ethnography project, you’ll collect most of your primary research by taking
fieldnotes, or descriptive observations at your research site. As you begin to jot notes
down around other people, whether they are familiar or strangers, you will undoubtedly
be confronted with questions similar to the ones listed above. It’s probable that people
will directly address your note taking, question why it is you’re recording elements of the
scene, the conversation. Or, people may just stare and try to look over your shoulder to
see what you are writing. You can, pretty much count on this sort of reaction, so the idea
is that you’ll need to be prepared. All of these things come with the territory of gather-
ing ethnographic data for your research by watching people and noting what they do
and say, the process of observing and recording that you will engage in again and again
as you complete your project.

Chapter 2 asserts that you must enter into an ethical relationship with your infor-
mants. You will need to obtain permission—be it oral or written—from those you are
using in order to gain information, primary data, for your project. How this is achieved
is often particular to the site and the project. Even so, you MUST ALWAYS let your infor-
mants know that they are being observed, that you are engaged in a project for class,
that their actions and words may be re-presented by you in a paper at some point down
the road.
Such disclosure needs to precede note taking. But, the note taking and the subsequent
writing of fieldnotes is, and should be understood, as the actual purpose and point of
your observations. In other words, while observing is important, the observations them-
selves mean nothing if they aren’t made visible and tangible in the form of fieldnotes. In
order for your interaction and observations to be understood as valid, to have any acad-
emic or intellectual weight, it must have matter, it must be visible, it must move from
intangible idea to tangible observation and this transition happens when you, the

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researcher, write down what you see, when you, the participant-informant, begin the
process of creating your own set of primary data.

This chapter explains the “how to” of writing fieldnotes, a particular form of primary
data. The production of this primary data is what separates this research project from
so many other research projects that may occur at the high school and college levels,
ones that really only ever involve the reading and regurgitation of secondary
sources. Understand that it is the collection of primary data, the writing of fieldnotes,
that brings you and your project into conversation with so many other disciplines, with
writing and research in other fields. This really is where and how writing becomes a
practice, the practice of observing and taking notes, of expanding those notes and even-
tually analyzing those notes.

Fieldnotes as a Primary Data Source

As you begin your research using ethnographic methodologies, including the writing of
fieldnotes, you need to be keenly aware that this kind of research, represented through
the written word, is subject to personal interpretation. You are choosing what to write
about, you are making decisions about what to include and what to omit. You, as the
researcher, come to the field with a particular set of values and beliefs and those values
and beliefs will affect what you see and how you see it. Ethnographic writing is always,
in some ways or others, a representation of the ethnographer.

This doesn’t mean that some ethnographic writing isn’t better than other ethnographic
writing, that the primary data itself isn’t valid or truthful. To be sure, fieldnote writing,
and ethnographic research does result in the production of primary data and you are, in
this class, being asked to produce such data, to actively participate in your own
project. This may be the first primary data collection experience for you. This means
that this is a learning experience, that your fieldnote writing will, over time, improve,
shift, become more dense, appear more like primary data and less like a journal writ-
ing. Many ethnographers write fieldnotes as well as journals, the principle difference
being the degree to which the writing serves to analyze what is being observed.

One of the stumbling blocks in writing fieldnotes for the first time is that, in the end,
fieldnotes are only for you. They are the primary data you will use to write your final
piece, your larger representation of your research. But, though it seems this would be

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low-stakes writing (writing only for you, without an immediate purpose), understand
that your final project is greatly affected by the time and care and attention you give to
these notes. Therefore, while any one set of notes may be low-stakes, collectively, they
are high-stakes, in indeed. Together all of your notes will become the foundation of this
project; they are the point of it all. But because it is “all you,” because of the appearance
of low-stakes writing, because you have probably never engaged in this sort of iteration
before, writing fieldnotes can be time consuming, confusing and, at times, appear
pointless.

In the following sections, we work to demystify the fieldnote writing process, to organize
and structure what has historically been a “word-of mouth,” “learn-as-you-go” process.

4a– Rhetorical Strategies for Writing Observations

What does it mean to “do fieldwork,” to “take fieldnotes”? The answers to these ques-
tions are at once simple and complicated. Simply stated, one “does research” by hang-
ing out in your research site, observing what goes on and participating in the activities
and conversation going on around you. This process is understood as participant-
observation research methodology. However, simply participating and observing isn’t
enough. You need to record your observations and thoughts on paper. You need to
record what people in the site say and do. You need to “take fieldnotes” and write down
what you see, feel and think about your research. When you write these observations,
thoughts, feelings and analyses, you are creating primary data.

Your first visit to your site presents the opportunity to “see” the site for the first time as
an observer/ethnographer. Make sure that you some device (pen, paper, phone, laptop)
available to record in writing everything that you see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and feel.
You’re going to try to capture the atmosphere and mood. You want to gather the kind of
information that will make it possible to bring your site alive through your writing. In
your first visit to the site, you also want to walk away with a good idea of how you see the
site now. This will be the first set of primary data, data that you will collect and add to,
moments and observations that you will later examine in order to see patterns in the
actions and behaviors in others, patterns in what it was that you found particularly
interesting. Your primary data set—your fieldnotes—will evolve over time and you will,

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at the end of this course, be able to compare the now information with how you see your
site later, at the end of your project.

At the site, you should try to take notes that address all five senses:

§ VISION: What is this place? Who are the people? What do they look like? What are
they doing? In what order do people do things? What artifacts and objects do you
see? What do people do with them?
§ HEARING: What do people say? What noises do you hear? How loud is it? How
quiet? Are is the sound from voice or other activity?
§ TASTE: Is there food involved in this setting? Does the space taste like anything you
know? Is taste important in this site?
§ SMELL: What odors do you encounter here? Do people reference smell? Does it
smell like other places you know? Does the smell remind you of other places?
§ TOUCH: Is there anything here to touch or feel? Are bodies close to each other? Is
this place sexually charged? Is it intellectually charged? What does the place make
you feel like? Where and how and when do people here touch each other? Are you
engaged in this touch? Is the touch ritualistic or random?
You should also note how you feel about being present at the site. Are you comfortable?
Do you feel out of place? Are you interested in what you see? Are you comparing this
context with a similar context in your own culture? Is this your own culture? What,
specifically, makes you feel that way?

Keep in mind that these notes are just notes. They don’t have to be complete sentences
or beautiful words. If your native language is not English and you are more comfortable
writing quickly in your native language, these on-site notes, or “jottings,” don’t even
have to be in English. What they do have to do is provide enough information for you to
expand on when you revisit the notes to begin to write. In several weeks, when you have
recorded many, many pages of fieldnotes, you will read through them carefully, looking
for patterns. What actions/behaviors/words/thoughts reoccur? What did you find to be
of extreme interest to you as you conducted your research? You will use those things to
frame and write your final ethnography paper, but in the meantime, you’ll be working
with your fieldnotes to produce quite a bit of writing.

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4b– Considering Types of Fieldnotes

To help frame our approach to fieldnote writing, we present three types of notes. These
are three ways of recording what happens at your site.

Headnotes
Taking fieldnotes is both simple and complex. In all actuality, the idea of writing down
what you observe, then what you think and feel about what you observe, and finally
what you infer from what you observe, is a rather simple idea. However, as soon as you
begin to think about how this happens, and what it should say or look like, the prospect
of collecting data may become overwhelming. You may begin to question what to write
down; whether it is important or not. You may become self-conscious of your presence
in the site, or feel inadequate as an interviewer. You will, (and we can almost guarantee
this) feel as though you haven’t seen, noted, heard, thought or encountered anything of
interest to yourself, let alone to an audience or readership. This last thought is the most
dangerous because it can prompt you to quit going to your site, to put your research on
the on the back burner, or to not finish the assignment as it has been presented to you.
While feelings of insecurity, anxiety and inadequacy are “normal” with respect to con-
ducting ethnographic research, understand that success is almost a given, as long as you
don’t give up. You must begin early and keep writing–no matter what. Our suggestion
for how you take fieldnotes begins with the initial process. While it may seem obvious,
the first step in the process of writing fieldnotes is the act of observing and participating
in your research site–in the field. Your actual thoughts–what you see, what you notice,
what you think about, what you remember–are the first step of the note taking process.

This may seem completely obvious, but think about it this way. Headnotes are, simply
stated, the notes you keep in your head. They are your memory and, as a result, are con-
tinually changing. Headnotes are incredibly relevant and important to your project
because they allow you to recall more details than your hand can sometimes record.

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Headnotes will, as this section goes on to explain, allow you to expand your quick notes
on-site, or jottings, into well-developed fieldnotes.

However, even though headnotes are extremely helpful, they can also be kind of danger-
ous. Because headnotes are a part of your memory, they are subject to interpretation–
shifts in perception over time. How you think about what you see will definitely shift
over time. As your thinking changes, so will your perception of what it is you have seen.
In other words, while what you write becomes static, headnotes are in a state of con-
stant flux.

As a result of the dynamic nature of headnotes, they are the key to good research. If you
have taken good headnotes, if you are mentally engaged with your fieldwork, then they
should occupy a great deal of mental space from now until the end of the semester. That
is, you know you’re taking good headnotes when you are thinking about your project
away from the site–when you’re not really even doing research.

Jottings
Though headnotes are extremely important to your project, your thoughts cannot
remain in your head. Your observations and ideas must make it to the page in order to
become primary data and inform your ethnographic essay. A first step in this process of
recording observations is to take a few, brief notes when you are in a site and then trans-
late these notes into complete sentences and ideas at a later time. In the book Writing
Ethnographic Fieldnotes, authors Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz and Linda Shaw refer
to these notes as jottings:
In attending to ongoing scenes, events, and interactions, field researchers take mental
note of certain details and impressions. For the most part these impressions remain
“headnotes” only. In some instances, the field researcher makes a brief written record of
these impressions by jotting down key words and phrases. Jottings translate to-be-
remembered observations into writing on paper as quickly rendered scribbles about
actions and dialogue. A word or two written at the moment or soon afterward will jog
the memory later in the day and enable the fieldworker to catch significant actions and
to construct descriptions of the scene. (19–20)
Jottings are crucial to the note taking process. You want to take as many jottings as pos-
sible when you enter your scene. Your memory might not be the best at first, so record
as much as you can about your scene.

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When you spend time in your site, you will want to bring along a notebook or electronic
device of some kind for the purpose of recording jottings. Don’t make the mistake of
thinking “nothing will happen” on a particular day at your site and end up having to jot
on napkins or your hand. Make a habit of carrying that small notebook or device with
you everywhere, and at all times, this semester or trimester or quarter. Though you may
not even be in your site, you never know when those headnotes you’re working on need
to be turned into jottings. As a final note, always make sure to note the date, time and
place, before you begin recording. This is very important information to have when you
go to write your expanded fieldnotes.

Interviews
In addition to taking jottings about your observations at the site, you can and should
also engage in conversation and interviews with informants at the site. As part of the
process of triangulating your research data, you will look to your own observations,
information from informants at the site, and secondary source research to create your
ethnography. You can tak a few minutes to think about when and how you might want
to conduct interviews at your site. Are you going to just conduct informal interviews,
asking folks questions as you think of them, inviting them to reflect upon moments as
they happen? Or, are you interested in conducting a more purposeful, in-depth inter-
view, one where you actually think about and use the interview as primary data along-
side your fieldnotes. The answers to the questions will depend upon your particular site,
upon what you are coming to identify as a focus for your final written essay.
Regardless of your decision regarding informal or formal interviewing, the ethics of
ethnographic research come into play. You always need to let your informant know why
you are asking questions and what you plan to do with the information. It is assumed
that if you’re conducting more informal interviews, a kind of interactive reflection as a
part of your regular participant-observation work, then you have already obtained per-
mission by notifying folks of your purpose, of alerting them to the fact that you are con-
ducting a research project on this particular site, on their behaviors, interactions and
comments. But it is always important to ask the participant about his or her own desire
to be quoted, about his or her own understanding of how the words might be use d in
your final work.

In ethnographic research, the interview can supplement what you are learning through
observation. Asking questions of someone who can help you understand the setting or
group you are researching provides a chance to learn directly how people reflect on their

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own behaviors, events, rituals, identities, places/spaces, values, etc. The ethnographic
interview is your chance to clarify, and possibly change, some assumptions you have
about the culture you are investigating and to gain an “insider’s perspective,” even if
you’re already an insider yourself. Sometimes it seems important, necessary, or desir-
able to choose to conduct a more purposeful, in-depth interview in order to enhance
your project and bolster your data collection. If you plan to record the interview, you
must ask and receive permission and it’s best to do this in writing and many states
require permission in writing for legal purposes. You can look back to the
Ethnographer’s Toolkit Box in Chapter 4 for a sample interview permission form.

Regardless of whether you plan to conduct only informal or formal interviews, you need
to work through these four guiding principles of interviewing etiquette and preparation
in order to help ensure valuable and valid data collection:

§ Know what you’re talking/thinking about.

This is the main reason why it’s important to wait a bit, to do a good deal of observing
and fieldnote writing BEFORE you begin asking folks a lot of questions. You need to
write, read and consider your own thoughts, to review and read context materials that
other scholars may have written about similar sites before you should launch into asking
questions of folks in your research site. You need to do this for two reasons.
First, because you want resist the temptation to think of yourself as a journalist, of
someone who is “collecting information” for the purpose of “reporting” truth or real-
ity. While simple information gathering is important, it isn’t the point or objective of
this sort of research. As suggested in Chapters 1 and 2, you aren’t supposed to know
what you’re going to write about until after you’ve collected all of your data and consid-
ered to patterns of discovery in your notes. As you conduct primary and secondary
research, you should come to learn and simply know the who, what, when, and of your
project. What you want to know, what you come to learn, should move well into the ter-
ritory of why and how.

Second, because you can’t really determine what it is you want to know/ask before
you’ve figured out what you do already know. Too frequently, students make the mis-
take of creating inquiry questions based upon fragments of knowledge, and bits of infor-
mation, most of which comes from the media, rather than fully developed academic
writing. You need to spend time in your site, spend time with secondary resources and

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truly think about what your seeing and, maybe more importantly, what you’re not seeing
before you start to ask other folks any questions.

§ Know what you want to ask.

In coming to know what you’re thinking or talking about, you will be better able to cre-
ate relevant and interesting questions, questions that invite interviewees to express their
beliefs, relay their interpretations, rather than simply reinforce your own. Once you
come to learn what you do know, and determine what else you might like to know, you
need to take the time to write out questions that you might ask of others. These ques-
tions should work to invite the interviewee to present their interpretation or under-
standing of an idea. They should be open-ended.

There are many possible interview topics that you may want to ask your “cultural infor-
mant about” in relation to the place/group you are investigating. Some ideas include:

§ social relationships (how they see themselves and others in the group)
§ organizational hierarchy
§ ways of doing things for others, patterns of politeness, ways of treating others, help-
ing, ignoring, criticizing and praising
§ ways of organizing space and things; using things; sharing space with other people
during different activities
§ clothing or food or other aspects of life that are key to their identity, their ideas about
themselves
§ story-telling, use of sayings and ways of talking, types and patterns of conversation
§ ideas and opinions about the place and the people there
With informal interviews, you may enter the site with one or two broad, open-ended
questions that are crafted in order to see how folks might respond to the larger trends
and observation patterns you’re making. For formal interviews, you’ll need to prepare a
list of questions that move from more specific to more general, open-ended questions,
but the goal is to get to the open-ended questions. Some suggestions of form for these
kinds of questions are:

§ Tell me about the time you….

§ I noted that you once said “X,” can you tell me what that means to you/what you
meant by that?

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§ I notice that it seems you/others (engage in X behavior). How is that
important/what does that mean to you?
§ What do you want to tell me about (this place/their life) that you think I need to
know in order to better understand you?
§ What would you want me to write about this place/your culture?
§ What’s most important to you about this place/culture?
It’s always a good idea to engage in a writing workshop when you’re creating questions
so that you and other students can learn from each other and share your thoughts with
the instructor. It’s never a good idea to enter the field, or initiate an interview without
feedback on your list of questions.

§ Know how to listen.

One of the most important things you can do in an interview, after establishing what you
do know, in order to get at what else you’d like to know, is to be a good listener! The
first, and last lesson of interviewing is this: You should talk much less than the person
you are interviewing. One of the best ways to do this is to convey genuine interest and
try to make it a relaxed situation, even if you are taking notes and recording
responses. If you make someone comfortable, they will talk. If you illustrate interest in
a story and truly listen, most people will positively respond with a lengthy response.

Much of making someone comfortable is about personality, but even if you don’t think
of yourself as personable, you can follow the following guidelines to encourage intervie-
wee response:

§ Ask them to tell their story

§ Use a tape-recorder when possible so you can look at the person rather than write a
bunch of notes. Always record verbal permission to make the recording.
§ Allow the folks time to answer—don’t feel the need to fill space. If there’s not much
of a response, ask if they need the question rephrased and be able to do so.
§ Listen while they are telling their story.
§ Ask follow-up questions about HOW they have told their story. What did they mean
by the use of the words X or Y? How did they feel when this was happening?
§ Note points of anger/frustration/sadness/joy and mirror it back to them: I noticed
that you smiled when…. It sounded as if that was a difficult time for you….
Remember that as an ethnographic interviewer, you are not a talk show host with a pre-
scribed plan. You want to make your informant comfortable, listen to the stories she or

10
he has to tell. This is, after all, a human relationship. The way you collect this data has
to do with humane interaction (Chapter 4) that situates your informant, above all, as a
person and not just a source.

§ Consider what you think/feel about the interviewee’s responses.

Though you may not recall every response provided by your interviewee, you will most
certainly reflect upon the interview in your fieldnotes. There are, of course, the basics at
issue here– date, time, location. But you also need to reflect upon what you heard, how
it made you feel to ask and hear the answers to these questions. This is where you can
record and reflect upon how and why you made specific decisions to ask what you did, to
follow up upon answers as you did. Can you think of ways of improving the interview
process? What went well, what didn’t? What else might you want to know? Who might
you also speak with? In this way, the interview itself can be used to inform the next one,
reflected upon as what you now know in an effort to revisit what it is you still need to
know. You may not ever reach a specific “end,” but in this way you can continually work
to narrow your focus and identify the area that most interests you in this project.

4c– Expanding and Revising Fieldnotes and Observations

After you have taken your jottings on site or completed interviews, you will want to
expand them into fully developed sentences and paragraphs. This writing is referred to
as expanded fieldnotes. In moving from jottings to expanded fieldnotes, it is a good idea
to type the notes and store them on a hard drive and on disk. Again, Emerson, Fretz,
and Shaw observe:

Typing notes with a word processing program not only has the advantage of greater
speed (slow typists will soon notice substantial gains in speed and accuracy), but also
allows for the modification of words, phrases, and sentences in the midst of writing
them without producing messy, hard-to-read pages. And fieldnotes written on comput-
ers are easily reordered; it is possible, for example, to insert incidents or dialogue subse-
quently recalled at the appropriate place. Finally, composing with a word processing
program facilitates coding and sorting fieldnotes as one later turns to writing finished
ethnographic accounts. (41)

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If you don’t have access to a computer, you should still develop a system in your note-
book to sort and organize your fieldnotes. Here are some specific suggestions for how to
go about expanding, sorting, organizing, and coding your fieldnotes. You should com-
plete this process with every set of notes as you expand them.

Observations:
§ Note the occurrences you witnessed or took part in when you were engaged in your
ethnographic research.
§ Note the date and time of observations.
§ Record the basic journalism info: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and HOW. You
should leave answering the WHY question to your analysis, unless this WHY is pre-
sented by an informant, i.e. someone offers up their interpretation of why something
is or was or happened and you simply record their ideas. the
§ Use all five senses when you are observing. In our culture we overemphasize vision
as a way of gathering information. In addition to sight, don’t forget about what how
your other four senses can gather information: SOUND, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE.
What you hear, how the space feels, what it smells like…all of that is very important
and can lead to great description of your site.
§ Be as descriptive as you can. Use metaphor and simile in order to talk about what
you observe. Rather than simply saying the floor is gray, or the couch is smelly, try
and explore what the color reminds you of or what the couch smells like. It’s not just
green, but perhaps the green that reminds you of salt mixed with pepper, or the
inside of a battleship. The couch might reek of cat piss, or remind you of your great
aunt’s perfume–a soft, subtle gardenia. At any rate, work to use other images to help
folks identify with what you’re describing. Don’t just tell us in plain words, try and
create images and a way for folks to tangibly connect with your site.
§ Record what you do and say as well as what others do and say. This is just a way of
restating the first point made above, but don’t forget that you are a part of this scene
and recording where you go and how you interact is as important of taking note of
the actions, behaviors and words of others.
Thoughts and feelings:
§ Consider your response as participant, observer, researcher in your site. There is a
fine line between thoughts and feelings at the gut level. Here, you want to explain
whether you were happy, sad, engaged, angry, grossed-out, excited, bothered, etc. as
you begin to engage with your observations as a human being. If you are using a
word-processing software, use a different font or italics to code your thoughts and

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 feelings. If you’re writing in a notebook, you can highlight these notes or use differ-
ent color ink.
§ Record how you feel and what you think about what’s going on. Does this remind you
of anything? Does what you see hit upon a certain memory or idea you have had in
the past? What do you think about what you’re seeing now? For the most part, these
thoughts are initial reactions that have to do with how you’re thinking about the
material.
§ How does your research/observation and participation make you feel?
Analysis
§ Observations and thoughts and feelings are primarily the kinds of writing you’ll pro-
duce during the first few weeks of your research. However, as time goes on, you’ll not
only want to record what happens and how you react, but you’ll also need to begin to
critically consider the reasons behind why certain things happen, and why you think
and feel about them the way they do. As a result, your fieldnotes should also include
analysis–the conscious exploration of the motivation and theory behind what hap-
pens at your site. If you are using word-processing software, use a different font or
bold to code your analysis. Once again, if you’re writing in a notebook, you can high-
light these notes or use a different color of ink.
§ Consider reasons for WHY your informants do/say what they do. You’ll be able to
comment on this as you notice patterns of behavior. What happens over and over
again? What is the function of this repeated behavior in this site? You might want to
comment on and respond to what some of your informants think about the purpose
and meaning behind their actions and behaviors.
§ Examine WHY you had the thoughts and feelings you had about the site or
interaction.
§ Examine your own thoughts and feelings and move into a deeper consideration of
the motivation behind your own reactions. How is this research affecting you? How
is it making you think differently about the world? Is it reconstructing, or reinforcing
beliefs you had when you began this research process?
§ Consider how the secondary sources you have read–other authors’ ideas–help you
think about your own research. These sources may help you to think about what you
see and hear, to critically consider the meaning and motivation behind the actions
and behaviors of those you are observing. When an idea from an article or a book
helps you think about your project, record that connection in the analysis section of
your fieldnotes.

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One trick to creating the organization in your expanded fieldnotes is to change font or
text style every time you move from one kind of writing to another. How you organize
them is up to you. You can write an observation section, then a thoughts and feelings
section, then an analysis section. Or, you can write chronologically, mixing your
thoughts and feelings and analysis in with the description as commentary. Or you can
find your own organizational scheme for the expanded fieldnotes. The important
thing is to include all of these elements and code them in some way. Then,
when you go to look for a focus for your final ethnographic essay, it will be easier for you
to sort through all the material you have gathered using this coding system.

Credit: Suzanne Blum Malley & Ames Hawkins ; http://www.engagingcommunities.org/writing-fieldnotes/

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