CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Field study is the collection of information outside a laboratory, library or workplace setting (Wikipedia, 2016). The approaches and methods used in field study vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct field study may simply observe animals interacting with their environments, whereas social scientists conducting field study may interview or observe people in their natural environments to learn their languages, folklore, and social structures. Geographers however carry out their field study on lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of EarthField study involves a range of well-defined, although variable, methods: informal interviews, direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective discussions, analyses of personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis, results from activities undertaken off- or on-line, and life-histories (Glaser, 1995). Although the method generally is characterized as qualitative research, it may (and often does) include quantitative dimensions.

The quality of results obtained from field study depends on the data gathered in the field. The data in turn, depend upon the field worker, his or her level of involvement, and ability to see and visualize things that other individuals visiting the area of study may fail to notice. The more open researchers are to new ideas, concepts, and things which they may not have seen in their own culture, the better will be the absorption of those ideas. Better grasping of such material means better understanding of the forces operating in the area and the ways they modify the lives of the people under study (Abu, 1998).When humans themselves are the subject of study, protocols must be devised to reduce the risk of observer bias and the acquisition of too theoretical or idealized explanations of the workings of a culture (Bourdieu, 1999). Participant observation, data collection, and survey research are examples of field study methods, in contrast to what is often called experimental or lab research.

Geography literally “earth description” is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of Earth. Four historical traditions in geographical research are spatial analysis of the natural and the human phenomena (geography as the study of distribution), area studies (places and regions), study of the human-land relationship, and research in the Earth sciences. Nonetheless, modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called “the world discipline” and “the bridge between the human and the physical science”. Geography is divided into two main branches: human geography and physical geography (Wikipedia, 2016). These branches of geography can properly be examined adequately through field study.