Fieldwork Techniques
Senior 4 · Geography
Fieldwork Techniques
Lesson 3 of 4
25 min
Good fieldwork is not a day out with notebooks. It is a small piece of research with four stages, each depending on the one before (Figure 5). A class that skips the preparation arrives without permission, asks questions nobody understands and collects data that cannot answer its own question.
Figure 5: the stages of fieldwork. The pilot study often sends you back to improve the preparation.
Preparation begins with a question. A class in Bugesera notices that the local market is crowded on its weekly market day and quiet on other days, and asks: do shoppers come from further away on market day? From this the class sets an aim and a hypothesis, then plans everything needed to test it:
Definition
Hypothesis: a statement, written before the fieldwork, that the data can show to be true or false. Example: "Shoppers travel further to the market on market day than on other days."
Null hypothesis: the statement that there is no difference or no relationship. Example: "The distance shoppers travel is the same on market day and other days." The data are used to decide whether the null hypothesis can be rejected.
Reconnaissance: a short preliminary visit to the study area to plan the work.
A pilot study is a small trial of the methods, carried out before the main fieldwork on a few people or sites. In the market study, asking five shoppers showed that "How far did you travel?" got answers in minutes, not kilometres, and that many shoppers did not know the distance. The class changed the question to "Which village or cell did you come from today?" and measured each distance on a map afterwards. The pilot also showed that each interview took about 3 minutes, so each group could manage about 15 in an hour.
On the day, each group works at its agreed place and time, uses the same questions in the same order, records answers at once, and follows the safety rules. Respondents are thanked. The class collected 10 answers on market day and 10 on a normal day; Table 1 shows the distances, measured later from the map.
| Day | Distance travelled by each shopper (km), in order |
|---|---|
| Market day | 1.5, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 20 |
| Normal day | 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8 |
Table 1: illustrative data.
Follow-up turns raw answers into a conclusion. It has five parts: processing (sorting, tallying and tabulating), analysis (averages, percentages, comparisons), presentation (graphs, maps, labelled photos), conclusion and evaluation (is the hypothesis supported, and how reliable is the result?), and the report, shared with the school and with the people who helped.
Definition
Mean: the sum of the values divided by the number of values, . Median: the middle value when the values are in order (for an even number, the mean of the two middle values). Range: the largest value minus the smallest.
Example: for 2, 4, 9 the mean is 5, the median 4 and the range 7.
Worked example 1: summarising Table 1
Market day.
Normal day.
On market day the median distance is three times larger and the spread much wider: the market draws people from a bigger area.
Worked example 2: from table to graph, and to a conclusion
Grouping the distances into classes gives the counts in Figure 6. The bars show the difference at a glance: 8 of the 10 normal-day shoppers came less than 5 km, while on market day 3 of 10 came 10 km or more.
Figure 6: the market data from Table 1, grouped into distance classes and drawn as a grouped bar chart.
Conclusion. The data support the hypothesis: shoppers travelled further on market day, so the null hypothesis is rejected for this sample. Evaluation. The result rests on only 20 shoppers, one entrance, one market day and one normal day, and on distances measured from the place names people gave. A larger sample over several weeks and at every entrance would make it more reliable.
Warning
"The data do not support my hypothesis" is a result, not a failure. Report it honestly and suggest reasons. Changing the data to fit the hypothesis is dishonest, and an examiner rewards a clear evaluation more than a "perfect" result.
| Section | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Title page | Title, names, school, date |
| Introduction | Aim, enquiry question, hypothesis |
| Study area | Location map, short description |
| Methods | What was done, where, when, how the sample was chosen, and why |
| Findings | Tables, graphs, maps and photos, each with a title and a description |
| Conclusion | Answer to the question; is the hypothesis supported? |
| Evaluation and recommendations | Limitations, improvements, suggestions for the community |
| References and appendices | Secondary sources used; blank questionnaire, raw data |
Tip
Exam technique. A question on fieldwork stages expects the stages in order and the purpose of each, illustrated from a study you name. "We wrote a hypothesis, then we tested our questionnaire on five shoppers, which showed…" earns more than a list of headings.
Johngraphy: "Fieldwork: Physical Geography 3/4, data presentation". The follow-up stage of a river study on the Isle of Arran, Scotland: how velocity readings taken along a stream are turned into graphs. Watch how each graph is chosen to show one pattern clearly.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa. Figures 5 and 6, Table 1 (illustrative data), the worked examples and the exercises were written by Ganzaa.
Video: "Fieldwork: Physical Geography 34, data presentation", Johngraphy, embedded from YouTube.
Quick check
Put the stages of a fieldwork study in order.
Tap the cards in the right order.
