How do you research a fieldwork investigation?

Watch: Introduction to researching fieldwork

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Play the video to watch Ayesha and James visit a park to research their fieldwork investigation.

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Planning your research
If you want to present your data in a table or graph you need to think of the types of questions you will ask.
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Researching your investigation
Remember the types of questions you could ask people – open or closed.
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Closed questions
Closed questions need a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.
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Open questions
It's easier to make a chart if you write a list of answers for people to choose from.
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Data
Think about how you'll show your data so that it's easy to understand.
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Staying safe
Always stay safe during fieldwork. Keep away from the road and stay with the group.

To carry out your investigation, you need to think about:

To find out people’s views during your fieldwork, you need to think of what types of questions to ask.

A closed question is where the answer is either yes or no, such as:

The data you get from closed questions is called quantitative data.
You can count the number, or quantity of people who have answered ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
This kind of data is easy to make into a graph.

Open questions are where the answer could be anything, such as:

What do you like best about the park?
Why do you like to come to the park?
The data you get from open questions is called qualitative data.
It is measured by the quality, not the quantity.
This type of data is hard to make into a graph, unless you make a list of answers to choose from.

See if you can design a questionnaire using either open or closed questions to try out on friends and family and then make a graph from the results.