Preliminary field-work: methodological reflections from northern Canadian research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the Canadian North researchers of all disciplines are increasingly finding that local communities are neither uninterested nor ignorant of the potential for research to benefit their communities. We propose preliminary field-work as the early stages of research in the field that allow for exploration, reflexivity, creativity, mutual exchange and interaction through the establishment of research relationships with local people often prior to the development of research protocols and ethics applications. Based on a review of field research literature combined with our own personal research narratives from northern Canadian community research, we initiate a much needed discussion on the topic of preliminary field-work in order to understand more clearly its functions and contributions. We reflect on and examine our own experiences providing methodological guidance to other researchers who are contemplating community-based field research. Preliminary fieldwork acknowledges the increasingly intertwined standards of research quality, integrity and broader research ethics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.158 | 0.131 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.077 | 0.064 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.019 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.008 | 0.016 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".