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New Technologies, New Applications: Using Access Grid Nodes in Field Research and Training
Principal Investigator - Prof. Nigel Fielding (n.fielding @ surrey.ac.uk)
Start date - July 2005
Duration - 14 months Now Completed
Location - University of Surrey
Website -
Aims and objectives
Access Grid Nodes (AGNs) are devices enabling visual images and audio to be exchanged in real time between different computers. Cameras and microphones relay images of participants, and their utterances, to other AGN sites, without limits on how many sites can be connected. AGNs provide large format images and high fidelity sound, aiming to make AGN communication as much like being co-present as possible. Images of computer displays, such as PowerPoint slides, can also be displayed, so everyone involved can see a common object of discussion. AGNs are mostly used as a medium for scientific meetings but show promise for many purposes where people need to collaborate without travelling to a common site, including conducting social scientific fieldwork.
Social science fieldwork often uses methods like interviews and group discussions (popularly called ˇ®focus groups'). Fieldworkers often must travel to participants or have participants assemble at some central point from numerous locations. With AGNs the researcher stays put and participants travel to AGNs local to them or link via AG software on their PC. This project evaluated this use of AGNs and documented procedures for ˇ®virtual fieldwork'. Field trials were conducted with a substantive focus on attitudes towards acting as witness in criminal trials (the P.I. having recently conducted research on this). Interviews and group discussions were held with a sample of students and staff responding via AGNs at UK universities. To demonstrate the utility of AGN fieldwork with ˇ®elite respondents' (such as members of the professions), whose busy schedules, professional constraints on research participation, and unwillingness to travel to a common venue, pose challenges to fieldwork, group discussions were then convened between judges in the UK and USA.
Research design and findings
AGN technology is new, and its exploitation for social science applications is only beginning. We chose to evaluate its use for individual interviews and group discussions because these are much-used methods of fieldwork. Our early experiments involved only research staff and technicians at Surrey and remote AGN sites. These were followed by individual interviews with a student sample, then group discussions with a student sample, then group discussions with US and UK judges. Topics were derived from those covered in interviews with witnesses and judges in Fielding's previous research, to enable comparison with data elicited in conventional fieldwork. As well as criminal justice questions there were questions about respondents' view of AGN-mediated fieldwork.
Criminal justice findings were broadly comparable to those from conventional fieldwork. Principal differences in the student data reflected the fact that our sample included a number of international respondents who contributed perspectives from other cultures. For example, one had witnessed an ˇ®honour killing' in his own country and gave compelling testimony about how his community-of-origin responded to such events and the impact on himself (he did not report what he had witnessed to the authorities and was torn between civic duty and worry that if he came forward his family could suffer reprisals). This added new dimensions to our conceptualisation of intimidation, and also told us much about respondents' willingness to give sensitive accounts in AGN-mediated fieldwork.
Findings in the judicial group discussions also related to the international dimension. Much of the discussion between judges on witness anxiety and intimidation involved comparing circumstances. Thus, the topic of intimidation elicited from one UK judge an account of how drug-dealing syndicates used threats more than actual violence, to which a US judge responded with an account of the murder on the steps of his courthouse of a prosecution attorney by a drug dealer.
The judges' experience of AGN fieldwork was enthusiastic, one commenting ˇ®thank you for this glimpse into the future'. We do not treat such estimations uncritically but they are worth noting alongside reservations. Reservations were expressed chiefly by student participants, whose greater acquaintance with other fieldwork modes, and more exacting expectations about technology, moderated their evaluation. This said, the overall impression was positive, problems often simply reflected the need to refine a new technology, and few sessions were entirely confounded by communication difficulties.
While the analytic benefits of virtual fieldwork could have been gained in conventional fieldwork, it would have required extensive travel, and there were indications that some respondents felt more comfortable than in a co-present interview/discussion. Our evaluation of fieldwork sessions was informed by a concept of ˇ®engagement', focusing particularly on obstacles posed by technical issues or adjustments fieldworkers need to make to accommodate the nature of the medium.
Dissemination and potential practical impact
Like other applications of Grid computing, we encountered scepticism when discussing our work with those not engaged in e-Research. We thus published results quickly to demonstrate what was possible. The publication, believed to be the first ever on fieldwork using AGNs, was placed in a peer-reviewed online journal, with embedded data clips so readers could see examples for themselves (see below for how to access this publication). On the stocks are articles aimed at established research methodology and socio-legal journals. We have also been active in conference presentations.
Turning to impact, we believe that this project has given proof of concept. We do not claim generalisable results nor the last word on technical, practical or methodological issues. What we do assert is that there is an interesting potential here that merits further investigation. Given fully refined AGN technologies and their more widespread availability, AGNs could be useful additions to the researcher's toolkit.
Moreover we can envisage scenarios beyond conventional academic work. Imagine a policymaker wants to know how a policy is being implemented countrywide. Local service providers and users can participate in a real-time, recorded discussion via AGNs in regional government offices, instead of researchers travelling to each region or everyone travelling to a central site. Advantages go beyond cost. In policy-related research, the context against which service providers and users are responding can change overnight. AGN sessions engage participants all at the same time, overcoming one obstacle to comparison ¨C the fact that conventional fieldwork takes time and all social phenomena evolve.
Presentations
Engaging with the Access Grid as a new data collection tool
N. Fielding, M. Macintyre, University of Surrey
2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, 28 ¨C 30 June 2006
Publications
Engaging with the Access Grid as a new data collection tool
N. Fielding, M. Macintyre, University of Surrey
Published in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, 28 - 30 June 2006
Access Grid Nodes in Field Research
N. Fielding, M. Macintyre, University of Surrey
Sociological Research Online, 11(2), 2006