BRUJA RESPONDONA

Field notes are the notes written by a researcher in order to record important details about data collection events, sites and researcher impressions (see Blommaert and Jie, 2010, for example, which discusses the importance of fieldnotes in ethnographic research). In the case of this study, I did not always write field notes, but in the event that I did, they were written immediately after the interview wherever it was logistically possible. During the process of carrying out the research, it became clear that field notes would add value, depth and detail to the interview transcripts. In total field notes were written for 12 of the 16 participants (see Table 3).

In all cases, the field notes had three key functions. First, field notes included important logistical information such as the times and places in which the interviews were carried out. Second, they acted as records of my immediate impressions of the highlights of the

interviews, as well as records of words or phrases that were spoken before or after the audio device was recording, talk I felt I might need to recall during analyses. Third, the field notes developed into a form of researcher self-regulation. By this I mean that my feelings and/or concerns about interviews including the manner in which the interview had been carried out were reflected upon. I then considered how these issues might be addressed as the research progressed. The extracts below illustrate this third particular use of field notes and includes ideas which were recorded which I thought might improve future interviews:

EXTRACT 1 from field notes: tried to keep a better balance in this interview. I tried to make fewer value judgements about aspects of her writing and stick to what was actually written on the paper.

EXTRACT 2 from field notes: I made a conscious decision to not be afraid of some self-disclosure. I had thought a fair bit about that and thought it was unfair and perhaps unethical to expect people to disclose their feelings and beliefs…without allowing some parts of me to be present in the interaction. I felt that our

relationship just wouldn’t be productive without some sort of honest interaction. In this sense, I think I [we] had a better interview.

The first extract above reflects a desire to develop, what might be perceived, as a more neutral stance on written texts, while the second extract reflects a growing awareness, and sensitivity to, the potential vulnerability of the participants in interviews. The second extract also explains how I came to believe that through some self-disclosure, I would be recognising the potential vulnerability of the participants and interacting more honestly with them. In this sense, the field notes can be seen to be a tool that provided spaces in which I could reflect on the interviews, and clarify where adjustments needed to be made to interviewing technique/s. The field notes helped me to make changes which improved the interviews as the study progressed. Figure 5, is an example of field notes written after the first interview was carried out with Clara:

We met at 10am. C was waiting for me in the small coffee-shop area in the foyer of her university’s library. She was waiting at a table at the front in the sunshine but we decided to move to a table behind a screen in the coffee shop – this was at the back and gave us a little more privacy. I organised a coffee for her – a flat-white from the coffee machine in the small area where we were sitting and we began. She was quite interested in my studies and where I was coming from with my research so I spent a little time at the beginning explaining my research and its background. We also did this at the end of the session – I left the tape recorder on during this time in case any issues came up.

C seemed quietly confident about her work and her interests – I think this may have been because she’d spent a long time in professional work which was specifically related to what she was researching. Perhaps it was also the fact that she had been a manager and, I suspect, had dealt with a fair bit of responsibility in these professional contexts. C was also interested in the notion of voice and this came up quite naturally. We talked about some reading I had been doing on the notions of voice and identity. Throughout the interview I also became quite interested in what she had to say about confidence and how she had acquired/was acquiring a certain kind of confidence in her writing and studies – from memory she related this to age.

She was also interested in whether her ‘single’ status (her partner lived away in a different town) affected whether she was suitable for the study – she wasn’t sure whether I was mainly interested in women with children with families. We had an interesting

conversation about this – I said that at this stage I looked at gender as a dimension that might engage with these kinds of categories, but that it was much more than that – I was also interested in how gender, for example, might affect our voices etc.

Figure 5 Field notes written after an interview with Clara – a participant in the postgraduate research writing study

Consequently, the field notes not only proved to be a useful form of data, or a source of important information that captured information which may not have been recorded in interview, but also as a tool which enabled me to reflect on my own practice as a researcher.