Dare I Embark On A Field Study? Toward An Understanding Of Field Studies

Field studies have frequently been advocated as a means for understanding cognitive activities in naturalistic settings. However, there are several fundamental obstacles that one has to overcome to conduct a field study. This paper discusses two of these obstacles in the context of studying problem solving in complex environments: defining goals of a field study and justifying methods used in data analysis. Based on our experience from a recently finished field study, we outline a framework for understanding the nature of field studies and suggest a specific approach to data analysis. We argue that the goal of field studies should not be limited to hypothesis testing, and that the process of data analysis in field studies can be viewed as an inductive abstraction process. Our field study is used to illustrate the abstraction approach to data analysis and how the obstacles in field studies were dealt with. Through these discussions, we encourage researchers to engage in more field studies

Abstraction · Cognitive science · Context (archaeology · Data science · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Management science · Process (computing · Cognitive Science and Mapping · Complex Systems and Decision Making · Computer Science · Engineering · Psychology · Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes

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• Culture and Inference

  Edwin Hutchins•Culture and Inference•1980

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