The Field Study Extended Project: From project design to publication... and everything in between.

Art Lightstone

I have integrated field studies into my economics programs for at least a couple of decades now. However, in more recent years, I have implemented a far more comprehensive field study project across all of my courses. I find that my students not only enjoy this project, but they become far more comfortable with the fundamentals of field research, including study design, data collection, and the drawing of inferences. I believe that field studies are now an integral part of a modern liberal arts education, especially for students of social science. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that field studies have become the new essay.

Field studies describe an organized, well-considered effort to collect data from a real-world environment. Field studies generate primary research data through the use of recorded observations, interviews, or surveys. Field studies are not to be confused with experiments, wherein data is generated from within a controlled setting - such as a lab.

The objective of any field study is to make inferences about what happens in the real world.


The Field Study Extended Project

In the Field Study Project, each student (or pair of students) would propose, design, and conduct some form of original field study. The field study must explore a phenomenon that is related to a course's overall topic of study (ex. law, sociology, or economics). The actual field study (i.e. the data collected) would form the basis of a scholarly journal article that can later be published within a journal that the class produces and posts online.

The Field Study extended project includes the following phases: 

I) Learn

Students familiarize themselves with the idea of field studies by reading field study articles curated by the course instructor. 

II) Design

• Students then design an original field study. Students should be reminded that simple and elegant designs for field studies are generally held in high regard. A critical factor to bear in mind when designing a study is the issue of validity. Students must ensure that they are actually studying what they are seeking to study - not some unanticipated factor. 

III) Ethical Review

• All students must submit their proposed study to an ethical review board comprised of their peers. All students must also volunteer to serve on an ethical review board. (Ethical review boards must be comprised of at least two students.) Each board must review at least two study proposals. (Download an example of an Ethical Review Application Form below.

IV) Conduct 

• This is the fun part. Once the students receive approval from their ethical review, they may proceed with conducting their field study. Conducting a field study may consist of distributing and collecting surveys, or just recording observations made at a certain location.

V) Write-up

• This is an informal piece of writing that will be assessed on a formative basis. Nonetheless, this piece of writing will serve as the foundation for both the presentation and the journal article: both of which will be included within the summative assessment for the course. (Please see below for the structure and the length of this component.)

VI) Present

• Students present their field study to the class. The presentation can use audio-visual aids or presentation software to assist with this presentation; however, there is no substitute for the ability to engage an audience solely with one's voice, knowledge, and speaking ability. (Please see below for the structure and the length of this component.)

VII) Publish

• The study will be published as an article within a scholarly journal produced and posted online by the class. Such a scholarly journal would generally require the use of APA citation. The front matter of the article must include:
  
  
  • a title,
  • a subtitle,
  • a 100 word abstract, and
  • three to five keywords.
    
    
  Following the front matter, the article should follow the structure outlined below. The article should also adhere to the length stipulated below.

Structure and Length

Structure:

Each field study write-up, presentation, and journal article should:

1. Outline some form of relevant issue.
2. Describe and quantify the parties involved or affected by the issue. (i.e. Who are they? How many are they?)
3. Explain why this issue is of concern to Canadian society; include any long-term implications the issue might hold.
4. Discuss the methodology used to conduct the study. (This can be as simple as observing the number of people who exhibit a certain behaviour at a certain time in a certain location.)
5. Outline the findings of the study.
6. Discuss possible interpretations or explanations for the study's findings.
7. Suggest possible implications of the study's findings.
8. Suggest possible directions for further research regarding the issue.
9. Present the raw data generated by the study within charts or tables. (This can be presented in an appendix.)

Length:

Write-Up: There is no prescribed lower or upper word limit for the study write-up. However, this study should be well considered and well implemented so that it can serve as the foundation for both your presentation and your scholarly article.

Presentation: Ten minutes.

Scholarly Article: Maximum of 1500 words, including the front matter. (Front matter for a journal article generally consists of a title, abstract, key words, and the names of the author or authors.) This is an article intended for publication within a scholarly journal, so it should be representative of the student's very best writing. Single spaced, at font size 12, the article should take up three pages within the scholarly journal.  

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