Critically examining the process of recording field notes is central to the grounded theoretical approaches to this research methodology because field notes capture the everyday lived experiences of the participants that produced theoretical description about youth drinking cultures. Additionally, the process of writing notes in the field diary informed the interactions
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and development of relationships between the research participants and I. At the time of commencing my own fieldwork whilst there was literature discussing the importance of recording field notes, there was limited practical guidance about recording notes in-situ during fieldwork, and a lack of critical discussion of the implications of recording notes alongside the research participants. Coming from a feminist standpoint of “giving something back”
(McNamara, 2009), I hope that transparency in this key research activity from my own experiences can support other ethnographers in future fieldwork endeavours.
“Whether field notes can be written at all, how, and covering what issues, depends on the nature of the research, the setting(s) in which the fieldwork occurs, and the role(s) taken on by the ethnographer” (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007:141). During fieldwork alongside young drinkers, I learned that I would constantly have to adapt the ways in which I recorded field notes and think creatively about recording notes in a variety of drinking settings because there was no ‘one size fits all’ approach that could be applied to the settings with the participants.
In keeping with the feminist ethnographic approaches, I ensured that I maintained accurate and detailed notes capturing the voices and experiences of the research participants themselves. Little did I know that in the early stages of fieldwork I was so immersed in recording notes and attached to the field diary that I had not realised it would impact how participants viewed and interacted with me; as ironically recorded in the field diary during a session at The Rafters:
Steven was leading a discussion with a group of young people from Birches High School about alcohol and drug consumption practices. Steven asked each young person and Cameron about what drugs they had consumed and effects it had on them […] When Steven got to me, I looked up at him expectantly waiting to discuss my own experiences with the group. To my surprise he completely bypassed me and avoided asking me the question. I was shocked at being left out of the discussion. […] During the de-brief I asked Steven why he chose to leave me out of the discussion. He replied,
“Because you had your head buried in that notebook of yours!”
At the time I was taken aback because I had not realised my error and assumed that Steven had excluded me for some other reason. He explained that he assumed I was immersing myself in making notes because I was trying to avoid answering the question and was trying to respect this. After this experience of misunderstanding, I actively made a point of learning to abbreviate notes and use prompt words (Wolfinger, 2002); then wrote extensive notes after fieldwork. Following the advice of Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) I did this at the earliest
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opportunity following on fieldwork experiences so that I could capture voices and experiences whilst they were fresh in my mind and avoid distorting events.
After making the conscious decision to abbreviate field diary notes and use prompt words so that I could focus my attention on what was actually happening in the field rather than making copious notes, this allowed me to be more focussed on observations and pick out nuances of what I was observing more closely. The abbreviations turned out to be imperative after a young male research participant at The Rafters, Toby, pinched my field diary from me:
I pulled up a chair and sat nearest to Toby by the sofas. Suddenly, Toby leaned over the sofa and took the field diary straight from me. Shocked, I questioned, “Toby, what are you doing?” He leaned away from me so that I could not take the field diary back.
“I want to know what you’re writing” and skimmed through the pages. Just as I stood up to take the field diary back from Toby he said, “I don’t even understand it” and handed it back.
This experience made me appreciate the value of writing shorthand because I realised how private and personal the field diary is. This little notebook contained the thoughts, feelings and experiences of myself and the research participants that I had encountered in the fieldwork.
Potentially anybody could pick this up and make judgements about the “raw” data written on the page. However, thankfully as highlighted by Toby, because of the abbreviations, the words had very little meaning to Toby but were of immense value to me as the words were loaded with meaning. This situation enabled me to protect the confidentiality and privacy of the participants until this raw data was ready to be interpreted and shared in an open environment.
In the moment of Toby taking my field diary I felt vulnerable, but I was also worried about betraying other research participants because I had allowed someone to take the field diary which I felt was an object which represented an entrustment between myself and the participants. Toby’s actions prompted new fieldwork reflections because he continued to show an increasing curiosity about the field diary which helped me to use it as a tool in which to build further field relationships with the young people in the research. This was shown in the field diary during the same session at The Rafters:
I could not help but notice Toby watching me almost every time I wrote something down. Whilst the group were completing an activity about drug categories in small groups, I noticed Toby watching me make notes again, so I said, “Here’s what I am writing” explaining it was the nick names that the group gave to the drugs they had been asked to think about. This time, I voluntarily showed Toby the field diary to reassure him. He laughed loudly which prompted Mason to take an interest in our
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conversation, “What are you two talking about?” Toby explained, “She’s writing words we use for drugs.” Mason became interested, “We know bare drug slang.” […]
Excitedly, Toby and Mason began listing slang that they use for cannabis, including:
‘crow’, ‘bubble gum’, ‘spiff’, ‘cheese’, ‘piff’, ‘food’, ‘ganja’, ‘zoot’, and ‘toot’. They looked proud about their knowledge. Mason said, “We can teach you loads of stuff for you to write down, just ask.”
This moment made me realise how sharing notes in the field diary proved to be a useful tool in which to promote trust, rapport and generate further data through discussion. Therefore, the visibility of the field diary in this setting turned out to be a useful way to generate discussion with young people in community settings. Consequently, when undertaking fieldwork in other community settings including the Sparrow Youth Club and the Sutton Youth Bus I deliberately recorded notes overtly so that it would promote curiosity. This was particularly useful when trying to interact with hard to reach young people and during moments when I felt like an outsider or intrusive with participants that I found harder to build rapport with, like the Alternative young people at the Sparrow Youth Club.
Whilst the field diary proved to be a useful tool in community settings, it transpired that it turned out to be calamitous in NTE settings; highlighting the need for me to adapt my fieldwork methods according to the setting and participants. During a fieldwork occasion with the Sutton Street Pastors there was humorous incident that occurred which made me realise that it was entirely impractical to have a field diary in public NTE settings:
As the Street Pastors and I were walking, an acquaintance Louise and her two friends Lucia and Amie spotted me and came over to chat. Louise asked, “Erm, are you out with these guys?” and began quizzing me as to why I was with them. I explained that I was with them for fieldwork, but she looked sceptical, “Oh. It’s just because of the Bible that you’re carrying…I thought you had become a Street Pastor?” I looked down and realised that she was referring to my field diary - a small black leather-bound notebook. I burst into laughter because of the connection that she had made; however, I realised she was right, it looked like a Bible.
From this point, I used my smart phone to record notes unobtrusively (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007), as I did not want young people to interact with me differently believing that I was a Street Pastor carrying a Bible. Using my smart phone to record notes became a necessity across all NTE settings, especially when conducting research with young drinkers.
I kept discovering how the field diary alienated young people in NTE settings. For example, when conducting research with friends there was clearly levels of embarrassment when I first attempted to record notes in the field diary in NTE, with one participant James remarking half
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seriously, “What the fuck is that? Put that away.” Other participants viewed the field diary as a barrier or an intrusion to their pleasurable drinking pursuits, encapsulated by Tony’s comment, “Are you making notes again? Just sit down and come and have a drink.” These experiences showed that whilst I wanted to be transparent and overt with participants about when I was recording notes during fieldwork, the field diary could be an obstacle to building fieldwork relations and rapport.
As a result of the above experiences, I formed alternative creative measures to record notes, and adapted to different settings accordingly. This included using my smart phone which was not alienating because the participants often used their phone to document their nights about through social media. Additionally, when I had a moment, I would go to toilet cubicles in drinking establishments and write notes in more detail; this is common practice joked about amongst ethnographers who need to write notes quickly, discreetly and privately (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Although this removed me from the fieldwork at times, adopting this approach had several benefits. It helped the participants feel more at ease around me and it gave me opportunities to reflect on the practices and values that were occurring to promote ongoing reflexivity. Moreover, as illustrated in Chapter Five, the location of the women’s toilets was a central point of analytical interest regarding women’s drinking.
These practices and reflections highlighted Hammersley and Atkinson’s (2007:142) point that
“satisfactory note-taking need to be worked at” and requires a repeated reassessment of purpose and priority in what, how and when to record notes. Reflecting upon my own research behaviours including recording notes in the field diary was vital in ensuring that I adapted to the different research settings and participants accordingly contributing to the data that informed my grounded theoretical approach. Sharing these approaches can help others to see that the practical difficulties in writing field notes can be deceptively underestimated by researchers (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007).
As fieldwork progressed, fieldwork notes became condensed, but there were enough notes and memos to prompt me when I needed to write more extensive narratives later on. As fieldwork took place sporadically; for example, I might spend several hours on a Monday at The Rafters, Wednesday evenings at the Sparrow Youth Club, Thursday evenings with the Sutton Youth Bus team and weekends on nights out with young adults; this meant that I generally had adequate time to write up extensive field notes shortly after events had occurred.
However, writing up these detailed notes was most challenging when I had spent nights out with participants in the NTE and returned home in the early hours of the morning needing to write them up when I was tired. Thus, having opportunities to write-up notes in places like the women’s toilets turned out to be productive because on some occasions after fieldwork I was
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too tired to write up notes when I got home; so, these notes helped retrieve fieldwork memories. This allowed me to preserve experiences and observations from fieldwork and ensure that notes were not stripped of rich detail (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 2011).
I took note of Emerson, Fretz and Shaws’ (2011:46-7) point that, “At best, the ethnographer
‘re-creates’ her memories as written scenes that authentically depict people’s lives through selected, integrated details”. During the write up of the extensive field notes, I ensured that I distinguished direct quotations from my own summarising or paraphrasing of the participant’s words and recorded uncertainties (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). This was so that there was no ambiguity and that I stayed ‘true’ to capturing the voices of the participants’ in-line with my feminist ethnographic approach. This ensured that were contextualised in relation to the participants, settings, timings and the surrounding circumstances which could be incorporated into subsequent data analyses (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007).
Writing detailed field notes entailed typing up as much detail as possible from memory, typically in chronological order and holding off evaluation and editing until initial accounts had been produced. Following Chicago School approaches, I attempted to write “lushly” (Goffman, 1989:131) by incorporating sensory visualisations and descriptive details about participants, their actions and their dialogue, characterisation and the research settings to bring the ethnography to life. Once the initial draft of the account of fieldwork events had been written, I revisited the writing and engaged in a reviewing and editing process to refine the accounts.
I was reassured by Emerson, Fretz and Shaw’s (2011) recommendation that it is OK for the ethnographer to make ongoing additions, polish writing and reorganise paragraphs accordingly during the writing process as I was initially concerned about how this might be construed engineering the ethnography. This process of moving backwards and forwards through the writing allowed me to bring the richness, texture and comprehensiveness to the writing that were not present in initial field diary jottings (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 2011).