1. Students must complete a field trip of at least one overnight away from home to collect primary research data on a travel experience. This includes keeping a field journal to document preparations, the trip itself, and reflections. 2. The field journal should be submitted as an appendix to an analytical essay analyzing tourism issues at the destination through the lens of literature on tourism studies. 3. The analytical essay must apply relevant theories from research literature to analyze the field trip experience, address tourism issues at the site, and reflect on what was learned from conducting the research. It should be fully referenced in APA style.

1. 1. Field Trip
To complete this assignment, you will collect ‘primary’
research data before, during and after a personal travel
experience. You will need to systematically study this primary
data that will be in the form of a record of a personal travel
experience - not necessarily a long trip, but a travel experience
nonetheless.
Remember:
· You must do this travel specifically for the assignment to keep
the travel journal which then contains the primary data.
· The trip should be started by the first non-teaching break if
possible because of its use in tutorials (for internals).
You all know that most tourism definitions accept an overnight
component and about 40 km from home as qualifying for the
label ‘tourist’. Keeping in mind this definition, select a trip or
tour of some sort, or design and take yourself off on one of your
own makings. Or, you might travel ‘home’ to visit your family
or old friends (VFR travel). You can travel alone or with
friends, other students or family members. Doing it with other
students in this unit can be very interesting.
The ‘passport’ definitions of tourism (overnight, across borders,
40 km, etc.) are unsatisfactory for thinking about what people
do and why they do it. This is one place where the separation of
leisure from tourism is problematic because most of the travel
we are studying is leisure travel. While it is debatable whether
your trip for this assignment is ‘work’, i.e. for an assignment, it
will have leisure components.
Maybe the first thing you should do is go to a travel office and
look at the brochures. Or find something relevant on the
Internet. Talk to family and friends for ideas. Think about
where you’d like to go and about the constraints you face in
deciding where to go. Start recording in your Travel Journal as
you do this. An early tutorial requires that you have some
brochures or Internet printouts relevant to your field trip and

2. that you can use them in class.
This is also an intellectual exercise because you have to
conceptualise, research and analyse the tourism issues extant at
your destination and the route you take travelling there and
back. Like all tourist sites, there are social, cultural,
environmental and economic issues to be dealt with.
Study Tip #2: What are Some of the Ethical Considerations as a
Social Scientists?
All research involves ethical considerations, whether it be
research with inanimate objects, non-human animals or human
subjects. In this unit, you will be undertaking a number of
activities which are ‘research’ oriented, and you will thus have
to be careful about ethical issues. Because you are not asked to
directly involve other people, the ethical concerns are easier to
deal with. That is, it is not expected that you will conduct
experiments or survey people with interviews or questionnaires.
However, most of you will engage in participant observation so
will have to take care not to invade privacy or otherwise cause
potential harm or distress to others.
See Appendix C to learn more about ethical considerations in
relation to conducting social research such as a field trip.
Notes for Students at Singapore Campus (Kaplan): To make this
journey appropriate for Singaporean students the requirement to
travel at least 40km away from home has been adjusted. Now,
you are still expected to take an overnight trip away from home
but flexibility has been brought in regarding the distance
travelled. However, you MUST discuss your choice of
destination with your lecturer and gain his approval for the
destination you have chosen.
2. Field Journal (as part of Appendices)

3. The field journal is important as a record of your primary data,
that is, to keep track of specific issues while on the field trip
itself. But, in addition, you should begin writing in it well
before departure so that you can also record the process of
anticipation. While writing in the journal, you should begin to
develop a feel for your research questions, what it is that you
are asking of your research, what it is you are trying to answer
in doing this research. This journal should be submitted as an
appendix to the field report and must be on the sheet(s)
provided. Besides being a record of your field trip preparation
and the actual trip, this learning journal will be reflective and
‘critical’; it includes your motivation. Include photos, drawings,
maps and your rough written journal as appendices to the essay.
Remove any private entries if you wish, but retyping of the
journal is not required. You are required to include at least the
following items in the journal:
1. a map of the journey: This should be an extract (original or
photocopy) from a published map of the area through which you
travelled. Be sure to include the publisher in the list of
references.
2. at least three brochures: These brochures (including online
brochures or websites relevant to areas through which you
travelled) must 'inform' about actual events in which you took
part or places that you went. If you are using online sources be
sure to include the URL on the extract and a full reference in
the list of references.
3. proof of travel: this could be air/bus/train tickets with your
name and travel dates, and/or receipts for any purchases made
during your field trip. At the very least, the proof must consist
of a date and location, so it objectively proves that you did
travel during the study term. Your lecturer/coordinator may
require you to provide further documents if the proof is deemed
insufficient.
This field trip is a form of social research called ethnography,
so the journal is a record of both the primary data of your own
experience and of the secondary material you collect during

4. your research before, during and after the trip. (‘Primary’ and
‘secondary’ are technical terms in social research, and we
suggest you look up the terms in a research book such as
Sarantakos’s Social Research or Babbie’s The Basics of Social
Research). This component may be written in the first person
and can express 'opinions' and personal reflections.
What are appendices?
Appendices (or an appendix section) are additional
items/information that you insert at the end of your essay, after
the reference section. Items you could add in the appendix
section in academic essay include photos, illustrations, tables,
and any other pieces of information that are relevant to the topic
but not something that you want to add in the main text of your
essay. Have a look at the page below to learn how format
appendices according to the APA style:
How do I do an APPENDIX in APA style? (Rasmussen College,
2018) - http://rasmussen.libanswers.com/faq/33090
3. Ethnographer’s analytical essay
The specific objectives of the ethnographer’s analytical essay
are to: find and use relevant research and theoretical literature;
use field data (primary and secondary); use theory and other
research to analyse the field data you have recorded and written
an extended analytical account using an essay style format.
Further, it should address the following points:
· It must address the tourism (and other relevant) issues facing
the site and the immediate surroundings. Your site is the 'case
study' you will use in your essay.
· It should be reflexive. That is, as you will have also been a
tourist, you as an individual have had to reflect on the
experience in your Ethnographer's Field Journal. You will need
to analyse it and write about it. Included here are your own
experiences; what you learned from the field trip experience.

5. The academic literature will provide you with the models and
theories to undertake this analysis. The field work was your
primary data collection method.
· The essay will be read as a stand-alone piece of work so key
information about the field work should be included as an
Appendix and as suggested below as part of the analysis.
· It should review literature relevant to the field trip, including
models useful for analysis of the site, the journey and your
experience/motivation as a tourist. Think of yourself as a tourist
who has made a specific selection of a trip. Why did you choose
this specific trip?
· It should not be written in the first person. However, you may
choose to write part or the whole of your essay in the first
person if you believe it is more appropriate for your essay. It is
still unconventional but increasingly more accepted to write in
the first-person style in academic writing especially in the
social science fields. However, caution must be exercised! You
need to ensure that your essay is written for an academic
audience, not a general audience. If you choose to use the first-
person style, I suggest that you look at academic papers that is
written in the first-person style to learn how it is done. I have
listed two examples below:
· Larsen, J. (2014). (Auto)Ethnography and cycling.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 17(1),
59–71. doi:10.1080/13645579.2014.854015
· Pearce, P. L. (2005). Professing tourism: and change leaders.
The Journal of Tourism Studies, 16(2), 21–33.
· It must be fully referenced using the APA (6th) referencing
style.
One of the crucial elements in your approach to this assignment
is having a research question. However, given the ethnographic
nature of this assignment, you may arrive at your research
question post hoc, that is, after you've been in the field.
Working up a research question even after the trip is finished
will help you toward the development of an argument in the
essay that you then write to analyse your field trip and field

6. journal.
See Appendix B (Field Trip Guidelines) for more information
about the Field Trip Assignment.
Study Tip #3: How do I structure my essay?
Here is a suggested outline structure for your essay. The
suggested word lengths of each component are just that, rough
suggestions. You don’t have to use this structure in this order
but do need to cover the main content areas specified below. Be
sure to develop your main points in the introduction and to use
transitional markers or connective words/phrases to link ideas
and sections as you progress towards the conclusion.
1. Introduction: Here you would outline the main points and
introduce what the essay covers. Introduce the reader to what it
all means, what you are going to tell us, your theme or
argument (about 75-200 words).
2. Literature review (content/body): You can’t effectively
analysis your case study (site, travel, etc.) without using the
research and theorising of others. The weekly readings, along
with other books and articles you obtain, will contain ideas and
models that you can use to help understand your trip. In this
section, you introduce those aspects of the literature most useful
for your particular trip (about 350-600 words).
3. The trip itself/method and results (content/body): This is
where you report on your case field trip: you should describe
the essential aspects of the trip, the experience of the trip, the
destination, mode of transport, etc. Use tables or appendices to
provide details such as site maps, the timetable of travel,
relevant brochures (only ones you use in the analysis), etc.
(about 300-500 words).
4. What it means/discussion and analysis (content/body): This is
where you apply the theories, models, etc. you extract from the
literature to analyse the trip, destination, experience, motivation
and so forth (about 550- 800 words).
5. Conclusion: This is where you draw together the main points
and the site and give the reader the final word on meaning. You

7. can also mention questions still to be answered, research still to
be done – your hunches, suspicions, uncertainties, etc. You can
also say something about how you’ll approach travel in the
future (about 100- 200 words).
Need more information? There are also a range of interactive
learning modules in relation to academic (or essay) writing,
field research methods and literature review on the LMS page.
You should take full advantage of these flexible learning tools
to develop your academic writing skills.