Field Guide for Research in Community Settings: Tools, Methods, Challenges and Strategies (Elgar Field Guides)

This insightful book offers practical advice to fieldworkers in social research, enabling robust and judicious applications of research methods and techniques in data collection. It also outlines data collection challenges that are commonly faced when working in the field.

Authors address key strategies to tackle the major challenges to fieldwork, including advice on using indigenous or innovative skills and making intelligent use of the advantages already available within standard research methodologies. International contributors provide a hands-on account of research methodologies as applied in the field, with particular focus on research ethics and community culture and interactions. The book offers a number of useful case studies, featuring examples of the application of research techniques in different cultural and socio-economic contexts.

Utilizing an innovative and dynamic ‘storytelling’ method, this book will be a useful research tool for fieldworkers engaging in social science research in community settings, as well as students in the field learning the core techniques of fieldwork.

Edited by M. Rezaul Islam, Professor, Institute of Social Welfare and Research, Niaz Ahmed Khan, Department of Development Studies, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Siti Hajar Abu Bakar Ah, Haris Abd Wahab and Mashitah Binti Hamidi, Department of Social Administration and Justice at the University of Malaya, Malaysia