Doing fieldwork from a distance
How does online fieldwork actually work? Plus, the Music Highlight
(Yours truly conducting fieldwork online, in the midst of a pandemic, with my amazing pilot participant from the Canadian Arctic)
A lot of us started our PhDs at the very beginning (like myself) or in the midst of the pandemic.
We either found ourselves starting out and planning our research from a distance, as we couldn’t travel - and some people who had started before the pandemic, had their research turned upside down and had to find other ways to conduct their research. We all did it in the end (or keep doing it like that), but the stress and anxiety was sky-high until we managed to find our way.
What did we need?
The same technological equipment on both sides - that of the researcher and the research participants.
We are very lucky to have a plethora of platforms to conduct our research on - Zoom (great acoustics, especially if you’re a linguist like myself), Teams, Skype (the last one much less than the other two, I didn’t hear many people using it as the other two have many more features) and so on.
Especially for myself, I had to make sure that the people I was recording had to be in a quiet, carpeted room so that there was no echo and no disruptions from noise, like other people or machinery working from outside and so on. Sometimes it’s inevitable, but you can start that part again if you’re disrupted. It’s better to repeat a part and get good results rather than not be able to process your recordings because of background noise.
How reliable is your research? If everything is done ethically and properly, and the university and your supervisors have been informed to the very last detail about what you are doing, then you are okay!
Do you want to have a comprehensive guide and advice from an experienced researcher? You have to read (and subscribe to) When the field is online by Janet Salmons. Janet shares all her experience as a researcher and PhD supervisor (what lucky students!). It’s the best (and only I think) Substack on this topic. I’m so glad I found her!
The Music Highlight
Who can forget this amazing song from the 90s? What a voice, what a song, what lyrics!
The accomplishment of doing all your work from a distance, our dear Vicky, is unbelievable- while supporting our parents so much! Thanks a million and congratulations!