Telling an Impressionist Tale: Enhancing Our Knowledge of College Students. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper

This paper explores technical questions of ethnographic study and uses as an example an actual episode observing college students and the subsequent decisions and steps taken to produce a written account. In particular, the paper seeks to address the question of researcher subjectivity by examining some issues relating to the practice of incorporating a field worker's voice into research reports. The first section of the paper outlines some views on the field worker's stance taken from the fields of mainstream sociology and anthropology and then supplements these with ideas from a feminist orientation. Subsequently a first-person by "impressionist" account is offered of an evening spent at a fraternity house by a participant-observer at a large, all-house party. The account includes commentary and interpretation informed in part by the author's own biography. A following section describes how the field notes were produced and transcribed into readable text. It also discusses his personal feelings about writing the material and sharing personal background material in the text, choice of tense, and how he inserted himself in the account while trying to minimize interrupting the story's flow. Final thoughts address how a story such as this is enriched by including autobiographical elements. Contains 19 references. (JB)