Fieldwork Roles and Informational Yield

Abstract

One of the basic premises of role theory is that all roles, by virtue of their attendant rights and obligations, function as avenues and barriers to other roles and their information bases and perspectives. Using this premise as a point of departure, this article examines how different fieldwork roles facilitate and impede access to different types of information. The types of information considered include (1) direct experience, (2) observationally derived data, (3) members' narrations or their accounts and recounts of their practices and activities, and (4) the “hard data” variety associated with institutional record keeping and formal communication practices. Access to these varieties of information are analyzed in terms of four distinct fieldwork roles employed in studies of recruitment and conversion to a religious “cult,” decision making and intergroup competition and cooperation in the peace movement, and homelessness in a sun belt city. The analysis concludes with a discussion of a number of methodological implications regarding the relationship between different fieldwork roles and their relative informational yield.