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<h3>Preface</h3> This guide is designed for students. Students can work with LRP in varying settings—in a class using LRP for an assignment, completing a 198 LRP Practicum, assistants preparing or posting materials on the LRP website, or participating in a faculty sponsored research project. Although the guide includes methodological and theoretical points, its primary purpose is to provide practical suggestions about field research in the local region’s rich array of congregations and organizations. Students should think of it as a “starter kit” to help them venture into the community. The guide is not, therefore, an introduction to conduct field research (although it does include a resource section at the end ). Furthermore, the guide assumes students initiate their research with a faculty member at Santa Clara and the faculty will , depending on the specific project, introduce students to discipline-specific research methods and issues. Finally, the research envisioned in this guide is documentary—while challenging in its own way, it is not the sort of in depth and scholarly research outlined in, for example, the Faculty Research section of the LRP website. LRP research and course projects may lead students to religious communities with whose practices and traditions they have little or no experience. In addition, students may find the mechanics of field research--observation, interviews, recording, note keeping, etc.--a new and challenging task. In addition to practical advice for meeting those challenges, this guide also orients students to an approach or mindset that should help them negotiate and learn from such experiences. Attending to the suggestions, therefore, will not only help students complete an assignment, but also ensure they have a positive and respectful interaction with individuals in the communities they study. This guide is an excerpt from a larger document, LRP Documentation of Local Sites Resource Manual. In several instances this guide refers readers to specific sections of that manual to obtain more detailed information and/or templates for their work. |
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