EDU 508: Quantitative and Mixed Methods in Educational Settings: Resources for Setting Up Research Projects

Many of the library resources included in this LibGuide also include information on fieldnotes.  Like bias, you will find fieldnotes are referred to in different ways and are discussed in different contexts.  You might find information on this topic under:

Ethnography

Fieldwork

Field Research

Sometimes "fieldnotes" is also treated as two words.

Another encyclopedia at Ikeda Library with entries on this topic is:

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, edited by Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Alan Bryman, Tim Futing Liao.   Available in the Reference Section, 2nd floor.

Call number:  H62 .L456 2004

Below are some external resources with information on creating and keeping fieldnotes.

Trying to ensure, before the study begins, that the data collected during a research study is reliable and valid is an important part of setting up the project.  There is an argument that the concept of "reliable and valid" in qualitative studies, however, is different than that in quantitative studies, or that reliable and valid don't apply to qualitative research in the same way that they do to quantitative research.  Some research scholars have proposed different terms and a different framework for understanding this concept in qualitative studies.

The books and eBooks in this LibGuide have discussions of validity and reliability.  External sources have also been included here to support your understanding of this concept, to help you learn more, and to give you the vocabulary you need to conduct more effective searches of the library's materials. 

A good way to see what might work well for a project--and to check you're not duplicating another study--is to read and analyze similar research projects.  You can see how they wrote up their projects and what justifications they felt were necessary, and you can see what you might need to do to increase the validity and reliability of your project's instrument. 

Ikeda Library has many databases that contain qualitative research studies. You can find links to these databases and others on the Education tab in the Databases page. Three databases specific to educational research are:

Ikeda Library also subscribes to a number of journals devoted to qualitative research and research studies.