ANALYZING SOCIAL SETTINGS
A Guide to Qualitative
Observation and Analysis
Fourth Edition
John Lofland
University of California, Davis
David A. Snow
University of California, Irvine
Leon Anderson
Ohio University
Lyn H. Lofland
University of California, Davis
THOMSONAustralia
· Canada · Mexico · Singapore · Spain
United Kingdom · United States
CONTENTS
List of Figures
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Preface to the Fourth Edition
xix
Acknowledgments
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Introduction: The Aims and Organization of This Guide
I. Three Tasks: Gathering, Focusing, and Analyzing Data
II. Features and Aspects of Fieldstudies
A. Gathering Data: Researcher as Witness
and Instrument
B. Focusing Data: Social Science Guidance
C. Analyzing Data: Emergence
III. Audiences
IV Yet More Labels for Fieldstudies
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PART ONE GATHERING DATA
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Chapter 1. Starting Where You Are
I. Personal Experience and Biography
II. Intellectual Curiosity
III. Tradition and Justification
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Chapter 2. Evaluating Data Sites
1. The Overall Goal
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II.
III.
Participant Observation and Intensive Interviewing
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Detailed Assessment of Data Sites
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A. Evaluating for Appropriateness
B. Evaluating for Access
1. Investigator Relationship to Setting
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2. Ascriptive Categories of Researcher
and Researched
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3. Difficult Settings
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C. Evaluating for Physical and Emotional Risks
D.
Evaluating for Ethics
E. Evaluating for Personal Consequences
IV. A Concluding Word of Caution
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Contents
Chapter 3. Getting In
I. Types of Settings
II. The Unknown Investigator
A. Public and Quasi-Public Settings
B. Private and Quasi-Private Settings
III. The Known Investigator
A. The "Insider" Participant Researcher Role
B. The "Outsider" Participant Researcher Role
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1. Connections
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2. Accounts
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a.
b.
c.
d.
Content
Timing
Form
Audience/Targets
3. Knowledge
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4. Courtesy
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IV Political, Legal, and Bureaucratic Barriers
V The Question of Confidentiality
Chapter 4.
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Getting Along
I. Getting Along with Self: Emotional
and Physical Challenges
A. Information Overload
B. Deception and the Fear of Disclosure
C. Distance and Surrender
1. Loathing
2. Marginalization
3. Sympathy
4. Identification
D. Physical Dangers
E. Dealing with the Challenges
II. Getting Along with Members: The Problems
of Developing and Maintaining Field Relations
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A. Strategies to Facilitate the Development
and Maintenance of Field Relations
1. Presentational Strategies
a. Nonthreatening Demeanor
b. Acceptable Incompetence
c. Selective Competence
2. Exchange Strategies
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Β. Strategies to Control Relational Closeness
1. Preempting
2. Finessing
3. Declining and Withdrawing
III. Getting Along While Getting Out
IV Getting Along with Claimants and Conscience:
Ongoing Ethical Concerns
V Postscript: Personal Accounts of the
Field Experience
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Chapter 5. Logging Data
I. Data: Fact or Fiction?
II. The Logging Task
A. Data Sources
1. Direct Experience
2. Social Action
3. Talk
4. Supplementary Data
a. Archival Records
b. Physical Traces
c. Photographic Data
B. Problems of Error and Bias
1. Types of Error and Bias
a. Reactive Effects
h. Perceptual and Interpretive Distortions
c. Sampling Errors
2. Measures to Control Error and Bias
a. Sampling Strategies
b. Team Research
c. Strategic Selection of Informants
d. Member Checking
C. The Mechanics of Logging
D. Protecting Confidentiality
III. Data Logging in Intensive Interviewing:
Guides and Write-Ups
A. Preparing the Interview Guide
1. Puzzlements and Jottings
2. Global Sorting and Ordering
3. Section Sorting and Ordering
4. Probes
5. Facesheets and Fieldnotes
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Contents
B. Doing the Interview
1. Introduction
2. Flexible Format
3. Ineffective Questions
4. Attending, Thinking, Taking Notes, Taping
5. Separate Forms
C. Writing Up the Interview
IV. Data Logging in Observation: Fieldnotes
A. Mental Notes
B. Jotted Notes
C. Full Fieldnotes
1. Mechanics
2. Contents
a. Be Concrete
b. Distinguish Notationally Among Member
Comments
c. Record Recalled Information
d. Include Analytic Ideas and Hunches
e. Record Personal Impressions and Feelings
f. Reminders
3. Style
ν. Interview Write-Ups and Fieldnotes as
Compulsion
PART TWO FOCUSING DATA
Chapter 6. Thinking Topics
I. Units and Aspects Combine into Topics
ll. Units
A. Practices
B. Episodes
C. Encounters
D. Roles and Social Types
1. Roles
2. Social Types
E. Social and Personal Relationships
F Groups and Cliques
G. Organizations
H. Settlements and Habitats
I. Subcultures and Lifestyles
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Contents
III. Aspects and Topics
A. Cognitive Aspects or Meanings
1. Ideologies (and Kindred Concepts) as Meanings
2. Rules as Meanings
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3. Self-Concepts and Identities as Meanings
B. Emotional Aspects or Feelings
1. Emotion and Practices, Episodes, and Encounters
2. Emotion and Roles
3. Emotion and Organizations
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C. Hierarchical Aspects or Inequalities
1. Hierarchy in Encounters
2. Hierarchy in Roles and Relationships
3. Hierarchy in Groups
Two or More Units or Aspects as Topics
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Units, Aspects, and Topics Form a Mind-Set
for Coding
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Chapter 7.
Asking Questions
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I. What Are the Topics Types?
A. Single Types
B. Multiple Types and Taxonomies
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C. Typologizing
D. Sources and Rules of Typing and Typologizing
II. What Are the Topic's Frequencies?
III. What Are the Topics Magnitudes?
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IV. What Arc the Topics Structures?
V. What Are the Topics Processes?
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A. Cycles
B. Spirals
C. Sequences
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1. Tracing Back
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2. Tracing Forward
3. Turningpoints
VI. What Are the Topics Causes?
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A. Requirements of Causal Explanation
B. Selected Models of Causal Explanation
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1. Experimental Model
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2. Statistical Model
3. Contextual Model
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4. Case Comparative Model
5. Step/Process Model
6. Negative Case Model
C. Clarifying the Relationship Between Qualitative Field
Research and Causal Explanation
VII. What Are the Topic's Consequences?
A. Foreground Issues in Examining Consequences
1. Requirements of Inferring Consequences
2. Consequences for Whom or for What?
3. Intentional and Unintentional Consequences
B. Examples of the Qualitative Study
of Consequences
VIII. Where and What ls Agency?
A. Passivist Versus Agentic Conceptions
B. Agentic Questions
Chapter 8. Arousing Interest
I. Social Science Framing
A. Trueness
1. Theoretical Candor
2. The Ethnographer's Path
3. Fieldnote and Interview Transcript Evidence
B. Newness
1. Relating to Existing Work
2. First Report
3. Unusual Setting
4. New Analytic Focus and Perspective
C. Importance
1. Questioning Mind-Set
2. Propositional Framing
3. Generic Concepts
a. Using Existing Social Science Conceptions
b. Discerning New Forms
c. Using Metaphors
d. Using Irony
4. Developed Treatment
a. Conceptual Elaboration
b. Balance
c. Interpenetration
5. Resonating Content
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II. Social Science Value Commitments
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Α. Demystification
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Β. Holistic Dispassionate Understanding
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III. Other Framings
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A. Technocratic/Social Engineering Frame
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B. Liberation Frame
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C. Muckraking Frame
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D. Expressive Voicing
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PART THREE ANALYZING DATA
Chapter 9.
Developing Analysis
I. Strategy One: Social Science Framing
A. Eight Forms of Propositions
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B. A Third Way to Contrast Propositional
with Other Writing
C. Number of Propositions in a Single Fieldstudy
II. Strategy Two: Normalizing and Managing Anxiety
III. Strategy Three: Coding
A. Two Physical Methods of Coding
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1. Filing
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2. Computer Databasing
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B. Types of Coding Files
IV.
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1. Folk/Setting-Specific Files
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2. Analytic Files
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3. Methodological/Fieldwork Files
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C. Maintaining a Chronological Record
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Strategy Four: M e m o i n g
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Strategy Five: Diagramming
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A. Taxonomies
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B. Matrices and Typologies
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C.
Concept Charts
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D.
Flowcharts
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VI. Strategy Six: Thinking Flexibly
Chapter 10.
Writing Analysis
I. Preliminary Considerations
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A. Understanding the Social Psychological Dimensions
of the Writing Process
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B. Plan Your Writing Time and Place
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Contents
IL Writing Practices
A. Start Writing
B. Write on Any Project Aspect, But Write
C. Admit Aversion and Write Regularly Anyway
D. Trust in Discovery and Surprise in Writing
E. Do Not Seek Perfection or the One Right Way
F. Divide and Conquer
G. Draw on Standard Literary Organizing Devices
H. Find Your Own Working Style
I. Reread and Revise
J. Seek Feedback
K. Constrain Your Ego and Related Attachments
L. Let It Go
III Concluding Observations
A. The Fieldstudies Approach as a System of Parts
B. The Similarity of All Scholarship
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References
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Index
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