TIPPR 4

This week's reading made me think about my own experience with conducting qualitative research and the pitfalls and unforeseen problems I encountered throughout the process. In the fall of 2000, I spent the semester living in East London, South Africa conducting research on AIDS education and working in a local technical college. Before going to South Africa, I had done a lot of preliminary research, mostly reading but I'd also talked with some students who had already been to the area and worked on my research topic. To relate it to this week's reading I would say that my research plan was much more loosely designed than the method that Berg proposes. Looking back on it, I can see that I was primarily relying on participant observation for my research and while I think I managed to produce a good ethnographic journal of my experiences, I can see where adding some of the other methods Berg proposed may have benefitted me and made my research more conclusive.

One of the interesting problems I encountered when planning my research project was that while I knew I was going to East London and I had some ideas of the community and the resources that would be available to me there, I could not really narrow my research question until I was in country and really able to see who I would be able to talk with and observe. I do think that if I'd had a better idea of where I would end up interning while I was there I would have been able to coordinate with my professor to create a narrower or at least more defined research topic than simply "AIDS education in South Africa". Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and part of the field study experience is to teach students to adapt and respond to the challenges of working in the field but as I remember the hours I spent pouring through old newspaper articles in East London's local newspaper office and the hundreds of photocopies I made of anything related to the topic of AIDS education (because it might be useful later) I can definitely see an advantage to going with a more structured research strategy. I also remember that several of the other students in my program struggled because the projects that had seemed so feasible back home in Provo ended up being far too difficult once they were actually in the field and trying to implement them.

While moving this summer I happened to find my field journal from my South Africa trip. I couldn't help but wish I'd had access to some of the technology I have now when I was there. I had two means of recording my research there, my notebooks and a camera. I would carry a small notebook with me at all times and would jot down little notes when I would observe something interesting or that I wanted to write about later and then when I had time I would sit down and flesh out my notes in a larger field journal. I would also try to take pictures of important things, but I was using a camera with actual rolls of film and I worried about carrying around so many rolls of film. I would love to have had a laptop to keep my journal, my fieldnotes are almost 10 years old now and the ink has already started to fade and the notebook itself is falling apart. Additionally, I have the pictures that I developed when I returned but I'm not sure where the film's negatives are and a picture can't capture the energy of a attending a traditional Xhosa wedding in the same way a video recording of the event would have done. Berg may be skeptical of digital media storage but I definitely think back up copies in multiple places is the way to go.





Word Count=649, but I don't think it's fair we're doing this on the one week I've actually gone over :p