Definition
Research methods which are specific to promoting feminist principles. A feminist research framework would be concerned with more than just how data are col- lected, but also what research questions are studied, which methods are used, how the data are analysed, how the results are written and for what audience.
Distinctive Features
Delamont (2003) reviews the history of feminist research methods, stating that the debates surrounding this area have been ‘angry, far-reaching and long- lasting’ (p. 60). In brief, feminist researchers began to publish their concerns about the implications of the sexist choice of research questions, methods and analysis during the 1980s (Clegg, 1985; Harding, 1986; Oakley, 1981; and Roberts, 1981). The authors were promoting their ideas following a time when sexist assumptions were rife within research. For example, researchers were focusing on research questions which were purported to be universal to the sexes but which actually only related to men, were building gender assumptions into their research instruments, and were even leaving data on women unanalysed, unpublished or dismissed as claims rather than facts. Since the 1990s calls for feminist research have reduced somewhat, probably reflecting the fact that there is much less sexism generally within society and consequently there is less of an issue within contemporary non-feminist studies.
Feminist researchers have argued that, as knowledge is power, research should have a political goal in addition to purely providing new knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Consequently feminist methodologists question the value- free approach of positivist research, arguing instead that research should be concerned with values, morality and the improvement of society. Social researchers would therefore have a duty to reflect upon the question of ‘whose side are we on?’ Such a standpoint has obvious links with other radical eman- cipatory methods and social movements with roots in the ideals of justice and a commitment to social change, such as gay and lesbian studies and critical race studies.
The traditional male approach to research is said to be characterized by detachment, objectivity and a hierarchical relationship between the researcher and the researched. This has led to calls for an explicitly feminist science in which, to quote an oft-repeated mantra, ‘feminist research is by women, on women, for women’. Feminist methods are consequently characterized by subjectivity, personal involvement and mutual benefit. For example, Oakley (1981) discusses the traditional advice given to interviewers that they should avoid answering respondents’ questions for fear of revealing their own beliefs and values and consequently biasing the data. For Oakley, having developed trust and even lasting friendships with her respondents, the traditional objective approach is morally indefensible. Furthermore, Oakley argues that it is only by investing one’s own identity in the fieldwork relationship that a researcher can gain access to the richness of data afforded in a mutual relationship of trust.
Examples
Probably the most famous example of feminist research is provided by Oakley (1980) in her powerful study of transition to motherhood. This study is dis- cussed in this volume under the entry for fieldwork relationships. An alter- native example is provided by Finch (1984) who discusses two studies of interviewing: first, 95 wives of clergymen and their relationship with their hus- bands’ work; and second, her research on 48 women using and working in a pre-school playgroup. Both studies focused on the women’s identity and their experience of marriage and motherhood. Drawing on Oakley’s (1979) previous advocacy of feminist research methods, Finch (1984) also discusses the special character of the research relationship in which women are able to talk to other women in an informal way and that the only morally defensible way for a feminist to interview women is in a relationship of non-hierarchy in which the researcher reveals some of her identity. Similarly to Oakley, Finch was surprised at the readiness with which these women would talk to her about their private lives (although she reflects that her own declaration of being a clergy-wife enhanced the trust between researcher and respondent), and also at the hospital- ity that was offered to her (cakes and home-grown cabbages). Finch also reflects that the social isolation of many of her respondents was also partly instru- mental in their willingness to share their stories with a friendly face. However, Finch goes on to discuss the ethical issues and potential exploitation that may arise from such research, in particular how her data could be used against the collective interest of women. Finch was concerned that her data seemed to be reflecting the idea that women were content with a supportive role to their hus- band’s work, or that her pre-school study reinforced a view that working-class women were inadequate and incompetent childcarers. For Finch, as with other
feminist researchers, there is an emotional as well as an intellectual commitment to promoting the interests of women.
Evaluation
Because of its commitment to subjectivity, feminist methods are almost always associated with qualitative methods, although Maynard (1994) has questioned whether qualitative methods must be used for the research to be true to the experiences of women. Other feminists, such as MacDonald (1994), have also been opposed to the idea of an anti-positivist feminist method due to their belief that political goals are best achieved on the basis of objective data.
In a review article of Anne Oakley’s work on childbirth and motherhood, Reid (1983) makes the claim that Oakley’s feminist approach, while being received enthusiastically both within and outside of academia, is actually poor science. Reid’s main criticisms are that the outwardly feminist stance makes the research vulnerable to bias and indeed, as Reid demonstrates, Oakley makes her biases plain. The resulting research therefore becomes more of a political state- ment than a piece of scientific reporting. More specifically, Reid is sceptical that Oakley’s cosy relationships with her respondents, in which friendships were maintained over years, were developed purely on the basis of gender. She muses that if Oakley had included a broader sample in which working-class women were more fully represented, then the bonds of friendship might not have been so sustainable. Developing her argument, Reid is also critical of Oakley’s claims (Oakley, 1981) that there is a specific methodology which can be identified as fem- inist. On this point Reid challenges the view that women have exclusive rights to be sensitive researchers capable of feelings of equality and non-exploitation, as well as challenging the claim that the principles of the women’s movement can be directly translated into a research methodology.
Associated Concepts:
Bias, Fieldwork Relationships, Trust, Uses of
Qualitative Research, ‘Whose Side Are We On?’
Feminist Methods
81 Key Readings
Clegg, S. (1985) ‘Feminist methodology’,
Quality and Quantity, 19(1): 83–97.
Delamont, S. (2003) Feminist Sociology. London: Sage.
Finch, J. (1984) ‘It’s great to have someone to talk to: the ethics and politics of
interviewing women’, in C. Bell and H. Roberts (eds), Social Researching:
Politics, Problems and Practice. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 70–87. Harding, S. (1986) The Science Question
in Feminism. Milton Keynes: Open
Fieldnotes
Definition
Fieldnotes are used by researchers to record observations and fragments of remembered speech. Although researchers may use other means of recording (such as video) and of other forms of data (such as interview transcripts), field- notes remain one of the primary analytic materials used in ethnography.
Distinctive Features
Fieldnotes were first used as a primary analytic material within the discipline of anthropology. The pioneers of modern anthropology did not make their fieldnotes public. Indeed, the private nature of fieldnotes led to a frisson of scandal when the fieldnotes of Anthropological Founding Fathers were subse- quently published revealing a backstage at odds with the anthropologists’ public personae. The private status of fieldnotes has also meant that there was, until recently, a shortage of models for novice ethnographers to follow and some mystery about the kind of coverage that should be aimed at.
Spradley has suggested a checklist of eight items that the researcher should bear in mind in writing fieldnotes: the space or location observed, the objects that are co-present at the location, the actors, the activity observed, the component actions, the wider event in which the activities occur, the sequencing of activi- ties over time, the goal that the actor is striving for, and the feelings expressed (Spradley, 1980: 78). Such a checklist should not be followed slavishly, but it does
82
MacDonald, L. (1994) The Women
Founders of the Social Sciences. Ottawa:
Carleton University Press.
*Maynard, M. (1994) ‘Methods, practice and epistemology’, in M. Maynard and J. Purvis (eds), Researching Women’s
Lives from a Feminist Perspective. London:
Taylor and Francis. pp. 10–26. Oakley, A. (1980) Women Confined:
Towards a Sociology of Childbirth. London:
Martin Robertson.
Oakley, A. (1981) ‘Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms’, in H. Roberts
(ed.), Doing Feminist Research. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 30–61. Oakley, A. (2000) Experiments in Knowing:
Gender and Method in the Social Sciences.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Reid, M.E. (1983) ‘A feminist sociological imagination? Reading Anne Oakley’,
Sociology of Health and Illness, 5(1):
83–94.
Roberts, H. (1981) Doing Feminist
Research. London: Routledge and Kegan
serve as a useful reminder that fieldnotes should aim for detail and for the kind of multi-layered, richly contextualized description termed thick description. Too often the ethnographer stares at his or her laptop after the rigours of fieldwork, tired by the past emotional labour of maintaining good fieldwork relations, seduced by the siren voices of family and friends offering company and good cheer, or intimidated by the felt need to put the child to bed or paint the bath- room. And in consequence, meaningful events go unrecorded or are only ‘thinly’ described, conversations and utterances are lost, and the insider understanding experienced during fieldwork is not captured on the page.
It follows that fieldnotes should be written up as soon as possible after the events to which they refer. Where possible, short aides-mémoire or pocket dicta- phones may be used in fieldwork settings themselves, for fleshing out into proper fieldnotes later on. These ‘notes made in the field setting’, as opposed to fieldnotes, may be particularly useful for noting research subjects’ verbatim speech: utterances recalled only hours afterwards are bound to be recalled inac- curately and are therefore better reported as indirect speech. In a minority of fieldwork settings, for example educational institutions, note-taking is a natural activity to be engaged in openly, but in most others blatant note-taking is apt to make research subjects self-conscious (or worse). So it is best for ethno- graphers to repair to the privacy of the lavatory.
Fieldnotes in the first days of fieldwork should have a different character from those recorded in the last days of fieldwork. At the outset, the researcher should aim for broad-brush descriptions of settings and events, conversations and local argot, constrained only by the foreshadowed problems framed at the outset of the research. In later days, fieldnotes will typically be shorter – since the ethnographer has now become habituated to much that was once fresh and strange – and will also be narrower in focus, shaped by emergent analytic concerns. These early analytic thoughts may also be recorded as part of the fieldnotes, or as part of a separate research diary-keeping activity.
Although the bones of fieldnote-recording can be set down, it remains – like most writing – a craft skill which has to be worked at and developed. Too often, fieldnote-recording feels like a mere addendum to a hard day’s fieldwork. At the risk of sententiousness, it needs to be stated that ethnographers should be pre- pared to put as much effort into their fieldnotes as they put into their fieldwork. Examples
Hammersley and Atkinson give an example of good and bad practice in fieldnote-recording with two fieldnote extracts describing the same staffroom interaction in a secondary school: the first fieldnote is much more compressed than the second and mingles reportage with speculation; the second fieldnote is three times the length of the first, preserves fragments of direct speech, and Fieldnotes
makes the contrast between report and opinion clear (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995: 181–182).
Evaluation
Ethnographic texts frequently use quotations from fieldnotes to illustrate – like a photograph – a textual argument, as if the quoted fieldnote was a slice of everyday reality captured in prose. But this simple ‘realist’ approach is under attack, not least from distinguished ethnographers like Clifford Geertz (1988). Since fieldnotes are self-evidently written and authored products, they cannot be treated as straight-forward objective representations of the reality of the fieldwork setting: they are selective in what they choose to describe, and the descriptions themselves convince the reader partly through their authorial style, rhetorical devices and artful use of local ‘colour’.
This postmodern critique of ethnography has led some researchers to retreat from fieldwork altogether into analyses of texts, including analyses of forms of ethnographic writing. Meanwhile others have continued to report data, typically single interview transcripts reproduced at length, but modestly present their analyses as one of many competing inferences which the reader may assent to or oppose (see Seale, 1999 for a critical overview of such studies). A third possible escape route for ethnographers from the relativist coils of post- modernism is to accept (and be reflexively aware) that authorial style and rhetorical device play their part in establishing the authority of an ethno- graphic text, but to defend the view that sound argument, appropriate use of evidence and methodological rigour also play their part in making a convinc- ing case. This awareness of the complex relation between rhetoric and science and the pragmatic use of scientific method in ethnography has been termed ‘subtle realism’ (Hammersley, 1992) – cf. the discussion on naturalism.