This past week, we did a little bit of observational work for our research. My group and I are going to focus on undergraduate housing, so I did some on campus observations of public places like Sadler and Swem. I chose these places just to how people were interacting with each other and with the space. I found that it worked best to just be by myself, so I could focus on observing as much as possible without being distracted. However, as I am a member of the community that I was taking notes on, I found it difficult to separate myself from what I was observing. I’ve found that it’s easier to take more insightful notes if I am new to the space, and neither Sadler or Swem are very new to me. I also found it difficult to not get distracted with the myriad of activity going on around me. I would notice multiple things at once that I wanted to take note of, become overwhelmed, and then notice new things. This made it difficult to capture a detail rich account of the area.
I found that constantly taking notes about everything I noticed was a good way to combat this. It hurt my hand, but noticing one thing after another and writing it down was a good way to capture as much as possible. It was helpful to not worry about writing things in a logical order, which is something I’ve learned about in my Sociology courses. It’s okay if the researcher taking the notes is the only one who can decipher them. What matters is that the note-taker can remember accurate details about the space from the notes.