Shannon Carter, PhD
Associate Professor of English
From Field Notes to Conceptual Memos to Interpretive Memo to Final Project
Your field observations are the heart and soul of a research project like the one you are undertaking for this class. Yet it
is not enough to describe what you learn in the field, your interviews, and/or the archives. You have to analyze what
you see as well, then report your findings.
I.
II.
III.
From Jottings to Field Notes: Each of your site visits, oral history interviews, and/or visits to the
archives should be captured in real-time (as you are reading, listening, and/or observing), followed as
immediately as possible by your expansion of those notes—summarizing what you observed, what that
might mean, and what you need to consider/do next.
The Conceptual Memo is a product of concentrated effort to identify and develop analytic themes while
still actively involved in the field and writing fieldnotes. In other words, this is your attempt to explore
what FNs taken over a specific period of time might mean and anticipate next steps. While your FN
capture a single visit, the Conceptual Memo calls upon you to look at a set of FN and begin analysis.
The Interpretive Memo is your opportunity to begin drawing forward firm interpretations of data
collected, elaborating on ideas, and linking codes and bits of data together. In writing the Interpretive
Memo, you seek to explore relationships between the coded FN and to provide more sustained
examination of a theme or issue by linking discrete observations.
To put it another way:
FN #1 + FN #2 (coded and analyzed) = Conceptual Memo #1
FN #3 + FN #4 (coded and analyzed) = Conceptual Memo #2
Conceptual Memo #1 + Conceptual Memo #2 (coded and analyzed) = Interpretive Memo
Interpretive Memo leads to Final Project
For all of the above, you should include:
I.
II.
III.
Overview/Summary
Problems/Setbacks (if any)
Patterns, Insights, or Breakthroughs
For the FN, offer an overview or summary of the single site visit or oral history interview or a close analysis of a single
artifact. Next, consider any problems or setbacks encountered. Then explore any patterns, insights, or potential
breakthroughs you see emerging.
Both the Conceptual Memo and the Interpretive Memo are sustained analytic writing.
For the Conceptual Memo, offer an overview or summary of research conducted over a specific time period and
specific artifacts. Line up more than one set of FN together with others. You are looking for patterns, beginning the
process of analysis. Offer an overview or summary of what you’ve seen thus far. Explore any problems or setbacks you
may have encountered and consider options for working past these setbacks or addressing potential problems. Finally,
consider what patterns may be emerging here. This is an excellent place for your coding. Consider your course readings
and outside readings. You are reaching for potential insight in response to your research question and considering your
final project. It is a good idea to address this memo to your future self, giving yourself advice on what to consider next
and what you are beginning to see emerge from your research thus far.
For the Interpretive Memo, offer an overview or summary of all your research conducted. At some point, the
researcher has to stop writing FN and begin reading them. ALL of them. And closely. Read all your Conceptual Memos
as well. Combine close reading with analytic coding. Then summarize what you beginning to see emerging from your
research. Describe any problems you may have encountered in your research with a eye to your write up. Not
everything has to go perfectly. In research, it often doesn’t go entirely as planned. That’s alright. The important thing is
to learn from this and report these experiences—both the successes and the failures. Finally, describe the overall insight
drawn from the patterns you see emerging from yoru research. That will set the stage for your write up.
Texas A&M-Commerce
Shannon Carter, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Qualitative Research in Five Phases
Phase 1: Preparing for the Field/Archives
Read, write, discuss, read some more. Reflect. Discuss. Read. Reflect.
All of the assigned course readings were designed to prepare you for the field, including methods, theory, key
arguments, and the rest.
Phase 2: Prepare Some More.
Define research question and topic worthy of exploration (and accessible). Reflect, discuss, and read some
more.
Locate relevant background materials, and ready yourself to enter the field/archives with the right questions
and the appropriate theoretical frame.
Phase 3: Select Qualitative Research Tool(s)
Oral histories? surveys? field observations? close readings of primary source materials? A combination of one
more tools? What research tool(s) is most appropriate for your project?
Phase 4: Enter the Field/Archives
Fieldnotes (FN) play a key role in qualitative research like this. Writing FN is more than a process of
remembering and getting it down. Rather, writing FN promotes learning and deepens understanding about
what has been seen and heard in the field or observed in close readings of primary source materials like oral
histories or other artifacts.
• Jottings: devices intended to encourage the recall of scenes, events, relevant quotes, or other details in the construction
of some broader, fuller FN account. What is “key” won’t be clear right away or always, and what seems “key” at one
point may not necessarily appear as key later in the research process.
• Full/Expanded FNs: Turn recollections and jottings into detailed written accounts that will preserve as much as
possible what you noticed and now feel significant. Expanded FN require a complex process of remembering, filling in,
elaborating, and commenting upon FN in order to provide a full, written account of witnessed scenes and events and
other relevant details (including findings emerging from close readings of archival materials). Tip: write to yourself as
future researcher first. As future reader of your own FN, you anticipate a detailed reading in order to code and analyze
the notes for a paper or an article. Attempt to keep it open-ended, though--allowing for new info and insight.
• Conceptual Memos: Both the Conceptual Memo and the Interpretive Memo are sustained analytic writing.
The Conceptual Memo is a product of concentrated effort to identify and develop analytic themes while still actively
involved in the field and writing fieldnotes--an attempt to explore what FNs taken over a specific period of time might
mean and anticipate next steps.
• Interpretative Memos: At some point, the researcher has to stop writing FN and begin reading them. ALL of them.
And closely.
Method: combine close reading with procedures for analytically coding FN on an ongoing basis.
Where do these codes come from? (1) line-by-line reading of FN, with an eye to recurring themes and/or (2)
general topic emerging from various conceptual memos
The Interpretive Memo is your opportunity to begin drawing forward firm interpretations of data collected,
elaborating on ideas, and linking codes and bits of data together. In writing the Interpretive Memo, you seek to explore
relationships between the coded FN and to provide more sustained examination of a theme or issue by linking discrete
observations.
Phase 5: The Write Up
Texas A&M-Commerce