Naked methodology: Baring it all for a realistic account of marine social science research: Contribution to panel, Researching people and the sea: methodologies and traditions

This chapter portrays what is often overlooked in research—that it involves not simply design, data collection, and analysis, but also failure and redesign. To demystify the process, it presents the evolution of a study of six coastal communities from a mixed methods qualitative and quantitative approach to a qualitative macroethnography. Intending to employ an innovative method, the Factorial Survey Approach, the researcher confronted serious challenges in the process, engendering reflections on (a) the limitations of the method, specifically in fishing communities, (b) the pressure to prove methodological bilingualism as an interdisciplinary graduate student, and (c) individual ontological growth. The chapter considers the collective tendency in (social) science to conceal the imperfections of field research, obscuring insights gained from situations when things do not go according to plan.