My plans for WA4 are to use an interview with the director of the BSM, Joe Schmidt, to get an insider’s point of view into my fieldsite. I’ve made contact with him several times and have talked to him about my study. Last week, he even let me sit in on one of their Junior Leadership Team meetings where I was able to collect another set of fieldnotes and observe an important part of the decision making team in the BSM. I’ll review the examples in Fieldworking to get a good sense of a text based model for WA4. I recorded my interview with Joe and will listen to it over and over to get a better sense of recurring themes and to take another set of fieldnotes. My interview with Joe dealt with both his personal life and the details of the BSM. Because he has been involved with the BSM for 9 years he knows the inner workings of the BSM very thoroughly and will be a tremendous help with my larger research project.
My coding system is one that uses the first letter of the alphabet to remind me of what I am referring to. I follow it with a simple number that can be added to so the code can be expand on if need be. These codes refer to pretty much anything that caught my eye in the many things I analyzed (my fieldnotes, interview with Joe, and literary materials collected from the site).
A1=internal studies within the BSM
L2=leadership at the BSM
C4=referred churches by the BSM
I5=international students
B3=BSM papers/advertisements
G7=anything “Go Now” missions related
W2=general pamphlet for something other than a church supported by the BSM
L8-letter to the students at the BSM
O2=outreach theme
W8=window paint M12=free Monday lunch
LT=leadership team
WM=word of mouth
FB=Facebook
It was hard to take a good set of fieldnotes from the East Caney study in class because I had a hard time hearing and understanding the video due to the computer speakers. I was able to get a better understanding of what was going on by discussing it with my classmates since some people heard parts of the conversation that others didn’t. The experience of trying to take good notes while the men were talking was much like it was in my actual interview. I learned you have to pay close attention to what is going while you are trying to write. Inevitably, you will miss something which is why it is important to record the interview and go over it later to catch what you missed.
