HL only: the fieldwork proposal form (research question, site, method choice, ethical considerations) practice questions.

A student's draft research question for the fieldwork proposal form reads: 'Is it wrong that traders at the Saturday market let children handle the cash box?' The supervisor returns it for redrafting. The strongest anthropological objection to the question as written is that it

• asks for a moral verdict instead of an account of what people do and of how they themselves explain it
• concerns an everyday commercial activity, which falls outside the range of behaviour anthropologists study
• would require far more participants than a single student could reach during the fieldwork period
• names a specific site, when a proposal is expected to keep the setting general until observation begins

Answer: asks for a moral verdict instead of an account of what people do and of how they themselves explain it

Cultural relativism is a working method: the proposal has to establish how the practice is organised and justified by those involved before anything is judged. A question of the 'is it wrong' form has no observable answer, so no fieldwork could settle it.

A student proposes to base her whole fieldwork on one two-hour visit to a craft fair that is held once a year in a town some distance away. Which weakness of the proposed site should the proposal address first?

• Craft fairs are organised for visitors, so nothing that happens at one can count as ordinary social life
• The setting cannot be revisited, so nothing observed can be checked, followed up or seen to change
• A public event of that size would require the written approval of the local authority before observation
• Fieldwork carried out in the student's own country is not accepted as fieldwork for this assessment

Answer: The setting cannot be revisited, so nothing observed can be checked, followed up or seen to change

Access that can be repeated is what turns a visit into fieldwork: a second and a third occasion let the researcher test a first impression, notice what recurs and ask people about what she saw. A single visit yields anecdote rather than data.

A student has written permission from the manager of a community sports hall to observe training sessions there, and enters this as the whole of the ethical considerations section of her proposal. What is the main omission?

• Nothing is missing, since permission from the person in charge of a setting extends to everyone inside it
• A separate approval from the building's owners, because a manager holds no authority over the premises
• The agreement of the people she will actually observe, which the manager cannot give on their behalf
• An undertaking never to publish any account of the sessions she has been given permission to attend

Answer: The agreement of the people she will actually observe, which the manager cannot give on their behalf

Permission to enter and consent to be studied are different things: a gatekeeper controls access, but only the participants themselves can agree to take part. Treating the two as one is the commonest gap in student ethics sections.

A student's proposal states that the town, the Saturday market and the fact that only four traders there sell fabric will all appear in the finished report, while its ethical considerations section promises those four traders anonymity. What should be changed before the form is submitted?

• The promise belongs in the report rather than in the proposal, so it should be moved there
• The interviews should be dropped, since talking to people raises undertakings observation does not
• Nothing, because an undertaking written on a proposal form binds the school and not the student
• The town and the market should go unnamed, so that the undertaking given can actually be kept

Answer: The town and the market should go unnamed, so that the undertaking given can actually be kept

A proposal is read as one document: what the ethical considerations section promises has to be deliverable by the design described a page earlier. Here the two contradict each other, so either the setting goes unnamed or the undertaking is scaled back to confidentiality of what was said.

A student expects that the members of a church youth group will act differently while he is watching them. His supervisor asks him to say in the methods section how the design handles this. Which entry answers the request?

• A single short visit, on the ground that the less time an observer spends there the less he disturbs
• Several visits across some weeks, with the earliest observations treated as shaped by his arrival
• An undertaking to sit apart and say nothing, so that his presence leaves the activity unaffected
• A note that only members who behave as they usually do will be written about in the fieldnotes

Answer: Several visits across some weeks, with the earliest observations treated as shaped by his arrival

Being noticed is a condition of open fieldwork rather than a fault to be removed: it fades as the observer becomes a familiar figure, and whatever remains of it is recorded instead of hidden. The proposal is marked on saying how it will be handled, not on claiming it away.

A student's question is whether the stated rule that everyone takes a turn at washing up in a scout hut is what actually happens after meals. Which method should the proposal put first?

• A questionnaire given to all members asking how often each of them washes up
• A recorded life history from the longest-serving member, covering her whole time in the group
• Repeated observation of the period after meals, recording who does what and in which order
• A group discussion in which members are asked to agree on how the rota is supposed to work

Answer: Repeated observation of the period after meals, recording who does what and in which order

The gap between the stated norm and observed practice is visible only if the practice is watched; every other option collects a further statement of the norm. Malinowski drew the same distinction from his Trobriand fieldwork of the 1910s, between what people say the rule is and what they can be seen to do.