Explain the concept of transparency. In a field research project, what types of information should the researchers provide to be transparent? Then indicate at least two reasons why a researcher's participant observer reports should be transparent. Finally, indicate one way in which field notes are important to researchers writing their final reports.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Transparency is an important feature of the scientific method that requires procedures, methods, and data analyses of any study to be presented clearly for the purposes of replication. As such, the types of information that researchers should take notes on and report on should be things like why they chose the setting or individuals they did. They should explain how they sampled them, how they maintained relationships with the individuals, and they should also indicate the role that they played. That means they should indicate if they just observed, if they participated and observed, or if they were a full participant in covert observation. This important because other researchers will judge the validity of the study based on the information provided. In addition, if a researcher wants to create a similar study, she would need to know how it was done the first time around. Also, knowing all of this would place more confidence in a researcher's findings. Field notes are important to this because if researchers have good field notes, then they can write a report that is more comprehensive and trustworthy because they are not filling in the blanks with information from their memory. Instead, their report is based on their systematic note taking.