The Approach to Fieldwork

As I have gone through my research, I was able to uncover many interesting studies about divorce and the effects it has on children. These studies have helped me develop a firm grasp on my topic and have shown me some interesting new viewpoints such as how the parent’s react to their own kids in those times as well. Now that I have gathered a fair amount of analytical sources, studies, and websites; I am ready to head into the field and discover for myself the effects divorce has on real people around me. I will be choosing to do a focus group and a duo ethnography for my field work because I feel that I can acquire a more personal tone from these people. The transition from analyzing sources to getting personal with people is one that I am both very excited and nervous about.

I want to make use of this personal aspect of the field work to show that divorce is not just a statistic that happens to other people. These stories from real people in my own life should shed light on my topic about how real divorce really is and my hope for this project is to receive some very personal and viable stories from people in my own age group. People my age will be at or near the end of their coping cycle if they experienced divorce at a young age so I will be able to see how others are doing at my age that have gone through similar events. I expect the hardest thing to come out of this project will be the gathering of the right people so that I can have the most useful information for my paper. Another challenge that I am trying to figure out is what topics I will ask to talk about so that I get viable answers to use. I enjoy talking with people and I am looking forward to working with individuals who have gone through similar life changes. I hope I can connect with these people and widen my viewpoint on their lives.