What is field research? Is it just for qualitative scholars? Must it be done in a foreign country? How much time in the field is “enough”? A lack of disciplinary consensus on what constitutes “field research” or “fieldwork” has left graduate students in political science underinformed and thus underequipped to leverage site-intensive research to address issues of interest and urgency across the subfields. Uneven training in Ph.D. programs has also left early-career researchers underprepared for the logistics of fieldwork, from developing networks and effective sampling strategies to building respondents’ trust, and related issues of funding, physical safety, mental health, research ethics, and crisis response. Based on the experience of five junior scholars, this paper offers answers to questions that graduate students puzzle over, often without the benefit of others’ “lessons learned.” This practical guide engages theory and praxis, in support of an epistemologically and methodologically pluralistic discipline.

中文翻译：

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实地研究：研究生指南

什么是实地研究？它只适用于定性学者吗？一定要在国外做吗？在该领域有多少时间是“足够”的？对于什么是“实地研究”或“实地工作”缺乏学科共识，这使得政治学研究生缺乏知识，因此没有足够的能力利用现场密集型研究来解决各个子领域的关注和紧迫问题。博士培养不均衡 项目还使早期职业研究人员对实地工作的后勤工作准备不足，从开发网络和有效的抽样策略到建立受访者的信任，以及资金、人身安全、心理健康、研究伦理和危机应对等相关问题。本文根据五位初级学者的经验，为研究生困惑的问题提供了答案，往往没有受益于他人的“经验教训”。本实用指南涉及理论和实践，以支持认识论和方法论的多元化学科。