Methods of field research: encounter, experiences and strategies in Nepali Villages.(Essay)

Introduction

A fieldwork exercise involves not merely the task of asking questions and noting down the responses, but also a careful plan and implementation of a series of strategies to obtain the desired sets of information. Part of the plan of fieldwork strategy requires identification of research site. The researcher should decide the geographical area of his/her fieldwork for the collection of data pertaining to his/her research. Part of it also relates to defining the research tools, which he/she intends to use in the process of that research. Even when these parts of research strategies are adequately devised, the research process does not imply a straight-forward activity. The investigator may encounter a number of challenges in the course of his/her stay in the field (Beteille and Madan 1975).

This essay highlights the methodological strategies as well as experiences I gained, encountered or followed during the process of the research. The fieldwork exercise for this research was conducted in the year 2001 and was focused on the theme "Household, Community and the State: A Study of Modes of Livelihood in the Hill and Tarai Villages of Western Nepal". This essay shows those strategies and experiences with a view that it may be useful for researchers' fieldwork plans in rural Nepal. In view of these multiple issues involved in a research process related to collection of field based information, this paper organizes the discussion by breaking down the issues associated with selection of field sites, encounters in the field and strategies applied to data collection processes.

Selection of Research Sites

There are three alternative ways available for a researcher to select his/her field-work site. One such a way is to take into account some specific sites as samples of a larger geographic region (Parel et al. 1973). A number of selection procedures have been suggested to identify these sample sites so that the data collected from these sites could be used to discuss the features of that broader geographic area (Lin 1976). However, to generate data which could represent the regional features, the researcher is required to visit a number of such sampled localities. Consequently, he/she is also required to use some strictly defined methodological tools that could allow the researcher to collect related information from all these sites within a limited time span.

The methodological tools which are strictly defined and are used to produce similar type of information from different types of localities are useful to generate mainly those data sets which could be used to discuss quantitative aspect of the problem. Social problems also involve a number of subjective qualities. They cannot be summarized in quantitative terms. Scholars have also produced some evidences that people may not provide an accurate response to questions asked by a strange investigator about the problems of their lives. It happens so usually in those conditions when these questions are asked by the investigator without building good rapport (Campbell et al. 1979). The methodological tools which do not permit the researchers to stay longer in the field do not allow them to gain an adequate opportunity to develop this intimacy with the people.

Questions may also be raised about the claims and utility of representative character of information collected through shortcut visit to sample sites (Denzin 1970). Field sites distributed in different places of a larger region may retain a number of specific features. These local specificities remain unexplained in the aggregate type of inferences derived from quantitative data gathered through visits to a number of field sites. They fail to provide a detail account of the local context of the problems by relating them to specific realities of their natural settings. Consequently, questions are raised about the authenticity of relationship between the diverse realities of empirical fields and their portrayal as a unified event depicted in those discussions (Dickens and Fontana 1993).