What does field research in sociology mean?

Question

What does field research in sociology mean?

Answer 1

Field research generally requires the researcher to go out into a public setting (an office, a street, a mall, a church etc.) to gather the data for their study.  Put simply, field research is not done sitting in a library or in front of your laptop.

Answer 2

Knowing what you want to know, then going out and talking to or even living with real people and writing about what they told and showed you about their experiences -

instead of writing only about what you read in books written by people who read other books.

(in that case you would be doing "field research" in academic culture - a very special type of culture indeed).

Answer 3

Probably doing interviews or testing live subjects.