Field worker.

Some qualities of good field work

Administration of questionnaire\schedule is often done by field workers called enumerator. The reliability and high turnover of some qualities of good field work are.

1. Internet work.
2. Honesty.
3. Tactfulness.
4. Personality.
5. Interest in work.
6. Adaptability.
7. Training.

1. Honesty.

The honesty is the essential quality I,e the interviewer should do what he/ she was instructed to do. Tampering of the responses, filing of the schedules/ questioner on own without eliciting responses from the responses are the example of dishonesty commonly known as cheating.

Honesty and integrity of the field worker cannot be easily assessed at the time of their recruitment. Therefore, utter care should be taken in recruiting the field workers. Ther safety way is to recircuit those who have been recommended by other survey agencies or research worker. The interviewers who are later found to be deficient should be quickly dismissed as blacklisted.

2. Tactfulness.

The field worker should be tactful. He must know how to deal with the respondents. Many respondents are often reluctant to give responses at first hand, therefore the interviewer must be able to persuade and bring them for providing the necessary information by tactfulness. He must be able to handle the situation according to the temperature of the respondents.

3. Personality.

There is a danger of over rapport between interviewer and respondent. As a rule, interviewer while being friendly and interested should not emotionally involve with the respondent and his/her problem. Also, the interviewer’s personality should be neither over aggressive nor over social. However, he/she should be pleasant and act as the business.

4. Interest in work.

The interviewer should be interested in the work entrusted to him/her . Once, he/she becomes bored, the quality of the work deteriorates. Therefore, occasional assignment rather full-time work are suggested for them.

5. Adaptability.

The interviewer should be able to adopt in varying circumstances in his/her field work. In this process of interviewing, the interviewer has to go through contacting different persons with different temperature, has to spend his/her time at different localities with the different living condition.

Therefore, the interviewer must be such as not having any prejudice against any group of people heaving different opinions/ attitudes/ and level of living conditions.

6. Training.

In order to make the interviewer perfect, sometimes the interviewers are to be trained on how to administrate the questioner schedule. There are two types of such training.

The formal training course usually lasting for three to five days.

On the job instruction with trainee going to interview with a supervisor, perhaps watching the supervisor performs the first few interviewers then talking over by him/ her.

Document.

In many studies especially in review writing and analytic studies data and relevant information are to be collected from the secondary source. The main sources of this information are the documents. A document is any thing in writing that contains matters of importance. Documents are classified as-

1. Personal/ Private documents.
2. Public document.

Private Document.

Private documents included all such written materials as written by an individual to narrate his/her view of the personal relationship and social phenomenon. The some of the example of the private documents are as

Life histories, Diaries, Letters, Memoir.

Life history may be spontaneous autograph written with a desired to keep the record of the events of one’s life. A voluntary self record written at instance of an investigator/ Publisher/ or any person/ or compiled life history of a person successive interviews with the person.

Diaries are the records of the daily events of life, feeling and reactions relating to the events. Diaries are more reliable then life histories, throwing light upon more intimate aspects of an event and clarifying the stand taken by a person regarding aspects of an event and clarifying the stand taken by a person regarding it.

Memories wrote by some people about their travels, important events of their life and other significant phenomenon that come across, provided useful material in the study of many social phenomena. Memories are different from the dries in the sense that they describe only some events and elaborate them more than in the diary.

Public Documents.

Most of the social studies use documents as the source of their information as it generally regarded that such documents provide authentic information/data. Public documents are public regarded dealing with the material of public interest. The public documents may be published as well as unpublished one.

The records in the form of the information condition in the files, letters, documents, proceeding of the meeting and conferences are the unpublished records/documents.

Published documents are the documents published or released by the government and the non-government agencies.

The information/ data contained in these documents often suffer from the problem of up-date ness, consistency, continuity and comparability. In spite of these limitations, the information gives in these documents are used for planning purposes.

Reference.

Kerlinger, F.N. Foundation of Behavioural Research. New Delhi: Surjeet Publication, 2000.

Kothari, C.R. Research Methodology. India: Vishwa Prakashan, 1990.

Singh, M.L. and J.M Singh. Understanding Research Methodology. 1998.

Singh, Mrigendra Lal. Understanding Research Methodology. Nepal: National Book centre, 2013.