Someone walks into a cafe, scans the room, sits at a table by the window, puts a bag on the chair next to him. An observer writes down “He wanted some privacy, he didn’t want anybody sitting next to him.” The first part is an observation of what could actually be seen; the second is a guess at his motivation, which is not directly observable. That is a tiny step away from observation toward interpretation, and it is easy to take, particularly if you recognize the scene. Recognizing that distinction is one of the most important skills to pick up in the early stages of learning ethnography.
Observation consists of recording what can be seen, heard, counted, or located in a social situation. Observation may consist of behaviors, speech, movement, timing, objects, distance between people, or the order in which things happen. Interpretation asks what those observations might mean. Both observation and interpretation are appropriate elements of ethnographic research, but it is unwise to conflate them too early. When interpretation becomes part of the observation, it becomes impossible for subsequent readers to know what part of the data came from the observed situation and what part of the data came from the researcher’s guesses about it.
One way to avoid this problem is to split your notebook into three columns. Label them “observation,” “interpretation,” and “questions.” Under observation, you would record details like “The participant lowered her voice when two other people approached.” Under interpretation, you might add, “It may have been a sensitive topic, or the arrival of other people may have caused them to feel more vulnerable.” Your question might read, “Does this group regularly lower their voice when discussing this topic?” This structure doesn’t prevent ambiguity. It simply makes ambiguity explicit.
Be careful in the observation column with words that seem observational but aren’t, including words like friendly, conventional, awkward, polite, or odd. These words may sound like you’re describing something concrete, but they are really telling people what you think of it. In the example above, if we wanted to report the greeting as being polite, we’d have to say who greeted whom, with what words, whether or not there was a handshake or a bow, how long it took, and how the other person reacted. A more detailed observation leaves more material for you to interpret later and makes it easier to find alternative interpretations.
As an exercise, go to a public place where taking notes is acceptable, and spend ten minutes observing some specific activity, like people getting in line, choosing a seat, or entering through a common door. Spend the first five minutes just describing what you see, without explaining anyone’s motivations or personality traits. Spend the next five minutes reviewing your notes, and underline any sentence that claims to be able to describe someone else’s thoughts, feelings, priorities, or intentions. Put those underlined sentences under “interpretation” and write at least one alternative explanation for each one.
Note-taking in an ethnographic setting is inherently reflexive, since the researcher’s location determines what will and won’t be noticed. An insider to a situation may ignore the everyday routines of that situation, while an outsider to the situation may regard everything that deviates from his or her experience as significant. At the end of the exercise, jot down a few sentences reflecting on why you focused on certain aspects of the activity and not others. Think about whether your personal expectations may have biased your use of words like normal, polite, busy, or calm. This won’t make your fieldnote inaccurate, but it will indicate how the fieldnote came to be written.
To determine if a sentence belongs in the observation or the interpretation category, ask yourself, “Could someone else have written down that same sentence without knowing what I was thinking?” If the answer is “yes,” then that sentence is likely an observation. If the answer is “no,” then you are interpreting, and you should place that sentence under “interpretation” and mark it as speculative. Good ethnographic fieldnotes don’t avoid interpretation altogether. Rather, they encourage gradual interpretation, where the observed behaviors, words, cultural context, and participants’ viewpoints all continue to be available, as well as conflicting observations.
