Summer Field Training in Methods of Data Collection, 2010-2013

Brandeis University, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Dr. Ricard A. Godoy, Brandeis University, will continue for four more years (2010-2013) an innovative and successful summer training program in field methods for anthropology doctoral students. The field school, which focuses on teaching methods to collect socioeconomic and bio-cultural data, is conducted in communities of the native Tsimane people in lowland Amazonia Boliva. The intensive program is run seven days a week for five weeks each summer. Students must be fluent in Spanish and show commitment to research and potential for scientific careers. They are trained in techniques of ethnographic probing, surveys, focus groups, scans, pile sorts, triads, experiments, anthropometric measures, and bio-markers. Hallmarks of the approach include: (a) moving students through most stages of research, from design, to hypotheses formulation, to pilot-testing methods, to data collection, cleaning, analysis, ending with presentation of results; (b) close, personal mentoring by faculty; (c) learning to work in groups as they pursue answers to questions of common interest; and (d) learning about the daily management of fieldwork. The core faculty comprise three cultural and two biological anthropologists, most of whom who have worked together with the Tsimane since 1999. Strengthening methods training for advanced anthropology graduate students is important to assuring new generations of competitive social scientists. Because anthropologists routinely conduct field research, training that is actually conducted in realistic field settings is essential, but difficult to do in university-based graduate programs. Thus this program fills a critical need. It also has a strong record of starting students on successful careers and of recruiting women and members of underrepresented groups.