A Day in the Field

What is “fieldwork”?

Development economists often talk about “going to the field”— but what does that actually mean? Why is it important to do fieldwork? And what does a day in the field look like?

“Going to the field” or “fieldwork” is like a rite of passage for any development economist. But it’s also much more, and in some ways, is an important bridge between research and reality. 

In the most basic sense, “being in the field” means nothing more than being in the natural setting of a study. When the term is used loosely, it can refer to being near where the study is being conducted. Typically though, it is also used to express outside-the-office research or data collection: running surveys or interacting with respondents. 

Fieldwork is important because it helps us generate better evidence, which in turn can be translated into more effective decisions and (policy) actions. The evidence that is used to inform policies often relies on data, including from experiments or from surveys. To design survey questions or interventions that are adept and answer pertinent questions, it is crucial to understand the local context: people, institutions, culture, and everything in between. 

Broadly speaking, this can mean anything from discerning household and community dynamics, to taboos to avoid, to which answer choice categories provide meaningful variation, to which interventions would be ineffective because take-up would be minimal. For example, through fieldwork, we learned that when we try to collect data on risk factors of dental disease, asking about brushing is not a helpful predictor — virtually anyone will state “yes, I brushed this morning” in response to a survey question whether they have or not. It’s this procedural knowledge — understanding the contextual factors that inform how things work in practice — that allows development economists to accurately (and ostensibly, ethically) estimate the impacts of programs and policies, helping us get closer to what various stakeholders are actually trying to accomplish.

On the ground objectives

In my role as a postdoctoral scholar, I was recently “in the field” to work on survey design for the Kenya Life Panel Survey (KLPS), a CEGA project founded by Ted Miguel, Michael Kremer, and others exploring the short- and long-term impacts of school-based deworming on a range of outcomes including nutrition, school attendance, income, among many others. KLPS is one of the longest ongoing panels in Sub-Saharan Africa and has informed high-stakes policy decisions. One of its most cited findings showed that deworming treatments in schools had lasting effects on children’s earnings and health decades later — the kind of evidence that has shaped school health policy across Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

During my month-long visit in February 2026, my goal was twofold: (i) verify that ongoing data collection for the fifth round of KLPS was running smoothly, and (ii) design and test new survey modules around health and aging. Accomplishing the first goal was relatively simple: accompany our team of field officers conducting surveys and flag areas where participants struggled — whether due to comfort, complexity, or survey length. The second goal was both more challenging and more rewarding. It entailed figuring out how to study something we don’t yet know anything about like perceptions of aging in Kenya. It required quickly interpreting and synthesizing data, designing questions, integrating feedback from the local team, coding data on the fly, and troubleshooting countless unanticipated hurdles. Physically being in the field was immensely helpful, making it possible to test, iterate, and conduct high-quality research.

Focus groups: enlightening conversations that matter

Focus groups are one of the most gratifying aspects of designing research. Bringing together small groups of participants from a target population provides insights that surveys alone cannot uncover. Discussions are led by local staff in the local language (Swahili), allowing participants to express themselves more comfortably than they could in English. This approach helps researchers capture richer information — like elaborate emotions and feelings — because respondents are often more comfortable expressing themselves in their native language. As a non-local with limited knowledge of Swahili, I observe from the sidelines and try to glean information from body language that I later discuss with the research field team, along with their own observations.

Meanwhile, the local research field team that facilitates focus groups, administers surveys, and implements our research demonstrated their incredible value while also underscoring the importance of in-person (and in the field) collaboration. In the field, I had many more — and significantly more meaningful — conversations with the local research team than would have been possible over zoom, and these interactions have fundamentally shaped the design and implementation of many of our research projects.

A day in the (field) life

While these examples illustrate key aspects and benefits of fieldwork, they only capture a sliver of the experience. To give a sense of what a day in the field feels like, below I share a runthrough of a typical day from my recent trip to Busia County, in Western Kenya.

So what does all this mean for researchers and for the broader development economics community? 

Fieldwork is intensive and necessary. The data that inform policy recommendations are only as good as the surveys and interventions used to collect them. Designing those requires understanding the local context such as knowing which topics are sensitive or which interventions are unlikely to be effective, and perhaps most importantly, which questions us researchers (who often hail from different countries on different continents) did not think to ask. Spending time in the field — and learning from local communities, research teams and study participants — helps us accumulate invaluable procedural knowledge and ensure that the evidence we produce is both rigorous and relevant for real-world decision-making.

Time	Activity
6:20am	Rise and shine!
6:30am	First order of business: checking my phone if anything important happened overnight (i.e. during the day in Berkeley) that needs immediate attention — fortunately not today.
6:40am	It’s about to get light — time for a quick run through the rural streets of Busia.
7:30am	Shower & breakfast — in my case, usually mazawi lala (soured milk) with sweet bananas (small Kenyan bananas) and local all-natural peanut butter.
8:00am	Walk to the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) office — our data collection team for KLPs works here.
8:30am	I am greeted with chai (Kenyan black tea steeped in milk) at the office. Our local team and I discuss the plan for the day and make last-minute edits to the focus group scripts. Before we head to the study site, I attend to the non-urgent emails that had accumulated overnight.
9:00am	Without Ubers or taxis (like in Nairobi) we rely on matatus for transport to our focus group site — a local village near Busia. Matatus are minibuses that manage to fit an incredible number of people. They don’t operate on set schedules; you just wait at the stop (which is not signposted, but local common knowledge) until a matatu going to your desired destination and with free seats offers you a ride.
10:15am	In the village, we meet the local elder in the garden of a community member who has kindly agreed to host us, and wait for focus group participants to arrive that the Elder has mobilized for us.
11:00am	All participants arrive and the focus group can begin. The local research team leads the discussion in Kiswahili. I only know a couple words, but follow along with my English script to track questions. I observe body language, animated discussions, and pick up on the occasional Kiswahili or English words.
12:15pm	We finish the first focus group and debrief with the field officers about anything that was noteworthy,reviewing questions for the next focus group. I ask about where I observed unexpected changes in participant body language.
1pm	The second focus group of the day begins.
2:15pm	We wait for the elder to make concluding remarks, stack the chairs back up, and say our goodbye’s. We inquire about the possibility of running future focus groups here again.
2:45pm	We’re back on the road, waiting for a matatu to take us home.
3:30	Back at the office, the team takes a quick break and buys food from street vendors. (Aside: flexibility and planning is important as meals and restrooms can be hard to come by.)
3:45	We debrief in detail, poring over notes, discussing different interpretations of answers, and identifying changes to implement in subsequent surveys.
4:30	By now, our energy levels are dropping. I send the field officers off to enjoy their evening and implement the survey changes we discussed.
5:00pm	The IPA office is about to close, and it’s time for the guards to lock up. A look at the ominous clouds outside confirms that I shouldn’t delay, so I briskly walk home, picking up some avocados and sweet potatoes at the farm stands on the way.
6:00pm	Dinner time: Said sweet potatoes have been roasted and avocados mashed. Friends and colleagues in the US are about to wake up, so I try to get all necessary email updates out while eating.
7:00pm	The sun has set, and I take a short break calling friends in Europe who are only 2h behind.
8:00pm	It’s 9am in California, which means it’s time for our team call. We discuss observations from the field and ongoing analyses on research projects that are further along.
9:30pm	The team call is over; my day is not yet. I jot down meeting debrief notes and send a few final emails to my colleagues. Their day is just getting started and I want to keep things moving smoothly.
10:15pm	Finally, my day is coming to an end and I head to bed.