Being there: the value of going to the field

Sometimes, at the tail end of another 20 or 30-hour trip, say, to conduct fieldwork for an evaluation, and after crossing as many 11 time zones and spending two nights on airplanes, I ask myself – why? What is the point of traveling, 7,000 miles? Couldn’t we have just had a few phone calls? In this day and age of instant communication, skype and other video chat applications, is it really necessary to be physically present for a meeting? Just think about the time and money spent on business travel. The Global Business Travel Association estimates that global spending on business travel  topped $1 trillion about 5 years ago and has been expanding ever since. That amount represents, give or take, 1% of the entire global economy. That is a lot – roughly the size of the Mexico’s GDP. Basically, you can think of it as the marginal value, to the public and private sectors, of face-to-face meetings vs. phone, skype or videoconferencing.

I was stimulated to write this blog post by the latest issue of New Directions in Evaluation (Winter 2017). The entire volume, edited by Randi Nelson and Denise Roseland is devoted to field visits – how and why they are a key element of conducting evaluations, among other things – a somewhat neglected issue in the evaluation literature. The discussions and articles have caused me to reflect a bit on the importance of going to the field (i.e. being physically present in the area where the program is being implemented) in my own work in international development.

There are two main aspects to field visits, which in the field of evaluation, are defined as going to the place where the program or project is being implemented. There might not even be any physical thing to see, such as a new school, equipment, newly installed energy efficient boilers, or what have you. You need to be there to meet with people in their own environment. And long trips and jet lag are actually the least of it. Field trips within countries can involve long car trips to remote rural areas along terrible roads in countries where road safety is somewhat of an afterthought, if not a downright inconvenience. (Auto fatalities pose a real risk to international development professionals. A few years ago I was involved in an incident in which the car I was driving in spun and flipped over on a country road in southern Malawi. I was lucky. I escaped with minor bruises. (Use that seat belt, folks.)

Yet, if you ask me whether I’d rather to do all my analysis from the comfort of my own home, based only on phone interviews or a desk review, I would respond…well, sure, but don’t expect the same depth of analysis or the same quality of information. It is much easier to get a sense of a project when meeting people – implementers, beneficiaries, other stakeholders. Doing a focus group by phone or video? Forget it. Take a look at the photo below, from a field trip I was on in Tajikistan in 2011. Imagine talking to those people from the village by video-conference.

There is also a very practical reason for preferring face to face meetings. When you can see the other people in the room, you can avoid the awkward pauses and people speaking over each other.

Conducting many types of analysis is not just about collecting information. A key factor in getting people to open up to you, and reveal their thoughts, is trust. And when you have never met the person, you can’t look them in the eye, you can’t read their body language. When people get a measure of you (the evaluator, researcher, entrepreneur, etc.) as a person, they tend to talk more. Until you see someone in the flesh, both of you are quite literally disembodied, and not quite real. Who hasn’t in the online dating scene hasn’t had such an experience? Before you met the person they may have seemed terrific, almost perfect, but once you meet them, you have a completely different (and often disappointing) impression?  The digital world, the world of two dimensions still doesn’t hold a candle to the world of flesh and blood! Whether you’re evaluating a project or a potential mate, you gotta get yourself up off the sofa, and get out there. For whatever reason, being physically present is a big step in getting closer to that ever elusive truth.