4: How to record in a research journal?
Chapter 3 has shown that what constitutes an entry to a research journal may vary from to-do lists and trackers through to notes from the field. What has yet to be discussed, however, is what the notes from the field may look like. As has been stated, the aim of this book is to provide practical guidance for making the most of a research journal, but also to demonstrate the scope and opportunities of journalling. If we have misconceptions about what a research journal looks like and what we should record, then these misconceptions also seep into the question of how entries should be recorded.
Guidance around ethnographic fieldnotes reconfirms the myth that there is a particular pattern of working and way of recording: getting notes down in the field to formulate detailed descriptions at the end of the day (Emerson et al, 2011) and memoing or memo writing, as in the way it is associated with Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006). Although qualitative researchers regularly apply these ways of working, scholars have noted methodological and practical concerns: first, disciplinary conventions and trends dictate the kind of note-taking or recording that happens (Rapport, 1991). Second, note-taking and recording fieldnotes are processes that often reproduce existing knowledge and skills because records are written from the positionality of the researcher’s own background, tacit knowledge and implicit beliefs (Wolfinger, 2002). And third, even well-known ethnographers are not able to fully articulate what happens or what exactly it is they do when they decide what to record (Walford, 2009).
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