Fieldwork Techniques

Lessons

Senior 4 · Geography

Fieldwork Techniques

4 lessons

Lesson 1 of 4

Fieldwork and Its Methods: Observing, Recording and Measuring

25 min

A page from a field notebook

Figure 1 is one page written by a student standing on a hillside. Read it before you read on. Some lines describe what she saw, some give numbers she measured, one records an answer from a farmer, and the last line is a question she could not answer on the spot. Each of these is a different way of collecting geographical information, and together they are what geographers call fieldwork.

Figure 1: one page of a field notebook (illustrative). Everything on it was gathered on the spot, by looking, measuring and asking.

Definition

Fieldwork: the study of geography outside the classroom, in the real environment, by collecting information first-hand. Its main methods are observation, recording, measuring, questionnaires, interviews and sampling.

Primary data: information you collect yourself, in the field. Secondary data: information already collected by someone else, such as census tables, maps, books and websites.

Quantitative data are numbers (a slope of 12°, 6 houses). Qualitative data are descriptions and opinions ("the soil looks dry", "the farmer says the terraces helped").

Example: in Figure 1, "slope angle 12°" is primary quantitative data; "terraces dug 4 years ago" is primary qualitative data.

Why go into the field at all?

A textbook can tell you that terraces reduce soil erosion. Only a field visit shows you that the terraces on this hill are 3 m wide, that a gully has formed where the path runs straight down the slope, and that the farmer dug the terraces four years ago. Fieldwork lets you test an idea against real places, see how physical and human features affect each other, and practise skills (measuring, mapping, asking questions) that planners, surveyors, agronomists and environmental officers use every day.

1. Observation

Observation is looking carefully, with a purpose, and noting what you see. It is not a casual glance: before you go, you decide what to look for (land use, crops, house types, signs of erosion, condition of a road) and you often carry a checklist so that every site is observed in the same way.

Direct (non-participant) observation: you watch without taking part, for example counting the types of goods on sale in a market.
Participant observation: you join the activity to understand it, for example helping a farmer to mulch a plot and noting how long it takes.

Definition

Observation: collecting information by watching, listening and noting features and activities in the field, usually guided by a checklist.

Example: walking along a road and ticking, for each building, whether it is a house, a shop, a school or a workshop.

2. Recording

What is not written down on the spot is soon forgotten or remembered wrongly. Fieldworkers record in several ways:

Field notebook: date, time, weather, site and notes, as in Figure 1.
Field sketch: a simple labelled drawing of a view (Figure 2).
Photographs: with the date, the place and the direction of view noted, and an object of known size (a person, a ranging pole) for scale.
Tally sheets and tables: for counts, such as vehicles passing a point.
Position: grid references from a map, or coordinates from a phone's GPS.
Audio: an interview recorded on a phone, only with the speaker's permission.

Figure 2: a field sketch keeps only what matters for the study, and every label names a feature. It needs a title, the direction of view, a frame and the date.

Tip

Five things on every field sketch: a frame, a title with the place, the direction of view ("looking north-east"), labels with lines to the feature, and the date. Draw the main lines first (skyline, slopes, river), then add only the features your study needs.

3. Measuring

Measurement turns "steep" into 12° and "fast" into 0.6 m per second, so that sites can be compared and ideas tested. The table lists instruments a school can use.

Instrument	What it measures	How it is used
Measuring tape	Distance, width of a river or road	Held tight and level between two people
Ranging poles	Mark the ends of a slope section; give a sighting height	Held upright at each end of the section
Clinometer	Slope angle in degrees	Sighted from one pole to the same height on the next pole
Compass	Direction and bearing	Held flat, away from metal and phones
Rain gauge and thermometer	Rainfall (mm) and air temperature (°C)	Read at the same time each day
Float and stopwatch	Surface velocity of a stream	Time a float over a measured distance
Metre rule	Depth of a stream, size of stones	Read at equal steps across the channel
Quadrat (a 1 m square frame)	Plant cover or the number of plants per square metre	Laid on the ground at sample points

When no tape is long enough, a fieldworker measures by pacing, after first finding the length of her own pace.

Worked example 1: measuring by pacing

Problem. On the school field a student walks a measured 50 m line twice and takes 66 and 64 paces. Later she walks 240 paces along a footpath. How long is the footpath?

Solution. Mean number of paces for 50 m: $\frac{66 + 64}{2} = 65$ .

\text{pace length} = \frac{50\ \text{m}}{65} = 0.769\ \text{m}

\text{distance} = 240 \times 0.769\ \text{m} = 185\ \text{m (to 3 significant figures)}

Walking the calibration line twice and taking the mean reduces the error of one uneven walk.

Worked example 2: a slope from a clinometer reading

Problem. Two ranging poles stand 25 m apart, measured with a tape along the ground. Sighting from one pole to the other, a clinometer reads 12°. Find the height difference (vertical interval, VI), the horizontal distance (horizontal equivalent, HE) and the gradient.

Solution. The 25 m is the sloping distance, the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.

\text{VI} = 25 \sin 12^\circ = 5.20\ \text{m} \qquad \text{HE} = 25 \cos 12^\circ = 24.5\ \text{m}

\text{gradient} = \frac{\text{VI}}{\text{HE}} = \tan 12^\circ = 0.213 \;\Rightarrow\; 1 \text{ in } \frac{1}{0.213} = 1 \text{ in } 4.7

As a percentage the slope is $0.213 \times 100 = 21.3\%$ .

Warning

Sloping distance is not horizontal distance. A tape laid on the ground measures along the slope. On gentle slopes the difference is small, but at 12° it is already 0.5 m in 25 m, and on a 30° slope it is more than 13%. Say which distance you measured, and convert before you work out a gradient.

Comparing the three methods

Method	Advantages	Disadvantages
Observation	Cheap and quick; shows real conditions; needs no cooperation from people; works where people do not speak your language	Shows what happens, not why; depends on the observer's skill and bias; some things cannot be seen (incomes, history of a place)
Recording	Keeps evidence for later analysis; photos and sketches show relationships between features; GPS positions are precise	Takes time in the field; notes can be lost or damaged by rain; photos without date and direction are of little use
Measuring	Gives accurate numbers that can be compared, graphed and tested; less open to opinion	Needs instruments and training; readings can be wrong if instruments are faulty or badly used; slow over large areas

A geography student on a field study at Numan, Nigeria, where the Gongola joins the Benue, 18 January 2023. He carries papers on a clipboard for recording and wears a high-visibility vest, a simple safety measure for work beside water. Photo: Csasavage, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Geography In Action: "Urban Fieldwork GCSE Geography Revision: Video 4, Comparing Fieldwork Data Collection Methods". A teacher collects data at a second site in Stratford, London. Notice how each method is chosen to answer one part of the question, and what each method cannot tell you.

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Practice

Define primary data and secondary data. Give one example of each that you could use in a study of a market near your school.
Classify each as quantitative or qualitative: (a) 38 stalls sell vegetables; (b) traders say business is slow in the dry season; (c) the river is 4.6 m wide.
Give two advantages and two disadvantages of observation as a fieldwork method.
A student walks a measured 40 m line in 52 paces, then walks 310 paces along a road. Find (a) her pace length, (b) the length of the road.
Two ranging poles are 30 m apart along the ground and a clinometer reads 8°. Find the VI, the HE and the gradient as "1 in $n$ ".
Explain why a field sketch must show the direction of view and the date.
A classmate says, "Phone photos make field sketches unnecessary." Evaluate this claim.

Show answersHide answers

Primary: collected by you in the field, e.g. counting stalls or asking traders where they come from. Secondary: collected by others, e.g. the district's population figures or an old map of the market area.
(a) quantitative; (b) qualitative; (c) quantitative.
Advantages: cheap and quick; shows real conditions; needs no cooperation; works across language barriers. Disadvantages: shows what but not why; depends on the observer's skill and bias; some things cannot be seen.
(a) $\frac{40}{52} = 0.769$ m; (b) $310 \times 0.769 = 238$ m (more exactly $\frac{310 \times 40}{52} = 238.5$ m).
VI $= 30 \sin 8^\circ = 4.18$ m; HE $= 30 \cos 8^\circ = 29.7$ m; $n = \frac{1}{\tan 8^\circ} = 7.1$ , so 1 in 7.1.
The direction lets a reader match the sketch to a map and to the ground; the date matters because crops, rivers, vegetation and buildings change with the season and over the years.
Photos record everything quickly and exactly, so they are excellent evidence. But a sketch selects and labels only the features that matter, makes the student look closely, and shows relationships (terraces on the steep side, crops on the valley floor) more clearly. The best fieldwork uses both: a labelled sketch from the photo, or a sketch checked against it.

Quick check

A student counts the lorries that pass a junction in 10 minutes. What kind of data has she collected?

Key points

Fieldwork collects primary data in the real environment: by observing, recording, measuring, questioning, interviewing and sampling.
Record on the spot: notebook, field sketch, dated photos, tally sheets, positions.
Measure with suitable instruments; pacing needs a calibrated pace length.
A tape on a slope gives the sloping distance: VI = $L\sin\theta$ , HE = $L\cos\theta$ , gradient = $\tan\theta$ .

Sources and credits

Written by Ganzaa. Figures 1 and 2, the worked examples and the exercises were drawn and written by Ganzaa; the notebook page is illustrative.

Photo: Gombe State University geography students on a field study at Numan (03), Csasavage, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Video: "Urban Fieldwork GCSE Geography Revision: Video 4, Comparing Fieldwork Data Collection Methods", Geography In Action, embedded from YouTube.

1A page from a field notebook

2Why go into the field at all?

31. Observation

42. Recording

53. Measuring

6Comparing the three methods