Complexity: Low
Time required: Field notes can be quite time consuming but are an essential part of ethnography. A rough guide is that the notes will probably take roughly the same amount of time as the encounter being recorded (i.e. if a researcher had done two hours of observations it would likely take two hours to write up.)
References: Hoey (2014)
What is it for?
To record any observations or interviews carried out in the process of ethnography. Fieldnotes are the data source in ethnography.
How to use it?
This is a guide for an individual researcher or a group of researchers to use during and after any observation or interview. It is good practice to separate the emic (what people said/ did) from the etic (What you inferred from that) for the purposes of analysis.
Additional tips?
Ethnography is an iterative approach. You will want to come back to fieldnotes as you learn more about your chosen community and see how your own understandings have changed.
