Manoeuvring the Complexities of Field Research in Africa: Experiences from Voter Turnout Research in Ghana
Fortune Agbele 
& Alexander Stroh
Issue: Vol.1 No.6 October 2020 Article 2 pp. 213 – 219
DOI : https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2020102 | Published online 21st October 2020.
© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Field research enables interaction between a researcher and research participants, offering an opportunity for the discovery of primary empirical data. As exciting as field research can be, for a novice researcher or research in unfamiliar terrain, community field research can also be daunting. These challenges may include, but are not limited to, the determination of community entry strategies, identification of potential respondents, as well as dealing with the non-availability of respondents. Based on field experiences, this research note offers practical suggestions on how to deal with these challenges within the realm of political science fieldwork. The experiences from a Voter Turnout research in Ghana shared in this note are of particular relevance to field research designs in the subject area of voter participation, focusing on voters as informants rather than experts or members of a professional network.
Keywords: Field Research; Political Science; Field Strategies; Voter Turnout.
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Fortune Agbele, MPP, PhD Candidate and Junior Fellow, Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Dr Alexander Stroh, Junior Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Senior Fellow of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Agbele, F. & Stroh, A. “Manoeuvring the Complexities of Field Research in Africa: Experiences from Voter Turnout Research in Ghana.” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 1, no.6 (2020): 213-219. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2020102
© 2020 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
