![]() In the beginning, I was afraid that without taking down extensive details (by constantly writing notes or turning the recorder while I interacted with research partners), I would miss important information. Instead, I followed a more fluid way of gathering information, sometimes at the dinner table with families that offered to host me, sometimes when I offered help to them, and sometimes while I waited for the shuttle with research partners. One important change that has occurred during this phase of my research is that I have stopped hastily interviewing research partners about their life histories and experiences with rural-urban migration. This allowed me to observe various occasions and facets of villagers’ lives, not just about their labor process. They have even started to be more proactive in our interactions, sharing their life stories about various historical periods, as well as asking me to share my life experience with them too. Meanwhile, I have also observed that the community has started to have a better idea of why I have been hanging around in the village. However, I also make sure that I obtain consent from research participants every occasion I interact with them. I feel more confident and skillful in how I engage with the families and convey the intentions behind my observations and inquiries/chats. Whenever I transition to the next groups of households, I also try to maintain contact with, and occasionally visit, the previous families. This way, the families participating in my study could attend to their own business, and I could also accumulate the time I spend with each family.Ĭurrently, I have just finished my participant observation with the second group of households. As I mentioned last time, my strategy was to divide the households into different groups so that I could visit a different family each day. I have now experienced a transition from “awkwardly” hanging out with the first group of five households in my study, to a more natural method of participant observation with different families during their daily activities. This fieldwork diary entry is an update to my previous research phase, in which I had just arrived in rural China to begin my year-long ethnography. Getting Grounded in the Field – Analyzing Participant Observation Data with MAXQDA’s Visual Tools
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