Workshop: A New Fieldnote Standard in XML

DISTRACT was joined by colleagues from SODAS and the DIPLOFACE project for an online workshop on developing a new standard for fieldnotes and interviews.

Frameworks, guidelines and standards for recording and analyzing fieldnotes have been proposed and discussed widely in anthropology and sociology for years. The novel goal that DISTRACT is pursuing, is to devise a standard of noting down observations, interactions, reflections, as well as meta-data (time, place, etc), that can subsequently be used more effectively in python and other programming languages. The standard that DISTRACT is developing is therefore so far based on the XML format, using Sublime Text.

A standard for fieldnotes and interviews would however add gains in the qualitative analysis of data by being applicable in team efforts where a group of people will need to access, read and analyze fieldnotes and interview transcripts, with or without the use of qualitative software such as NVivo.