Final Preparations for Field Research

In sales, a “cold call” is when you pick up the phone and call up a potential client or customer without warning. You have no idea what reception you will receive, nor what will come of the call. It’s a challenging but sometimes necessary way of making contact with the people you need to conduct your business.

Fortunately, in academic research you have the time to avoid this uncertain kind of contact by doing some background research on the people--and places--you need to contact. Why waste your time getting to a place and finding out that the person you need is unavailable?  Or why travel half way across the city to find that your destination of choice is closed for the season?

Field research can be fascinating or frustrating, depending on how much prep work you do. Here are some ways to avoid disappointment, and how to make the most of your off-campus investigations.

Anticipate What Kind of People Who Will Be at the Destination

People and places go together. If your assignment takes you to a particular neighborhood or historical spot of interest, keep in mind that the location is more than just the physical space it occupies. Think about your destination and try to guess what kind of people you would expect to be there: workers, residents, visitors, shoppers, etc. For some destinations it may be obvious; for example, at a museum you’d expect to see tourists and museum workers. However, there may also be visiting school groups and teachers.

It would be interesting to know why they have chosen to visit there, what information they are hoping to gather, and how this museum fits into their school curriculum, for example. From such questions, you would learn more about what this museum means to the community, or it’s value, in other words. You would come to see the museum as more than a collection of dusty objects behind glass, and see it within its social and perhaps economic context.

If you’ve done some brainstorming ahead of time, you should be able to prepare some questions to have ready if and when you encounter people there. (This is especially helpful if you tend to be shy of approaching strangers!)

Gather up Architectural Information

Buildings are more than wood and concrete structures and some students have arrived at a destination only to report back that “there was nothing there”. In several cases, some background prep would have led them to recognize that indeed there was plenty of interesting architectural information to gather.

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