The Standard · Research and Insight
Fieldwork & Ethnographic Research
Uses AI to organise and analyse fieldwork while protecting participants and context.
You organise field notes, interviews and observations into patterns, memos and accounts for academic, applied or public readers. You use an AI assistant to surface themes, but the assistant can flatten context or expose participants.
The exam for Fieldwork & Ethnographic Research is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Fieldwork & Ethnographic Research, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to surface contrasting interpretations, unanswered questions and contextual gaps your ethnographic reader needs.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with field setting, research purpose, source material, output form, length and required analytical content.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into a thick account by preserving context, adding interpretation and shaping scenes from field evidence.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check proposed themes, quotations and interpretations against dated field notes, recordings and interview transcripts before using them.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep participant identities, sensitive field notes, recordings and consent details out of the assistant's brief and output.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide what coding and drafting the assistant receives, retaining ethical judgements, interpretive authority and decisions needing approval.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A coded theme map from anonymised field notes and interview excerpts.
- 02
A thick ethnographic scene from observation notes, contextual detail and participant speech.
- 03
An analytical memo from coded field data, competing interpretations and reflexive questions.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in fieldwork & ethnographic research. They briefed the assistant with field notes and context, caught flattened interpretations, and delivered a grounded ethnographic account.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Fieldwork & Ethnographic Research
- Who it is for
- Ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, human geographers, UX researchers and qualitative evaluators.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Academic Research
Conducts academic research with AI and verifies every source and claim.
- Market Research
Runs market research with AI and separates evidence from confident guesswork.
- Policy Research
Researches policy with AI and confirms every citation against the primary text.
- Academic Writing
Writes academically with AI's help, with sources real, cited and read.
- Critical Evaluation
Evaluates claims and evidence critically with and about AI.
- Customer Research & Insight
Gathers customer insight with AI and checks that the synthesis reflects what customers said.
- Competitor Analysis
Analyses competitors with AI and verifies the facts before they shape strategy.
- Qualitative Research Methods
Applies qualitative methods with AI support and keeps interpretation rigorous and human.
Everything in Research and Insight, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Fieldwork & Ethnographic Research covers this skill. No book is required to pass.