A field notebook is for recording which items?

• A. Date, Time, Brief Descriptions
• B. Witness Statements
• C. Full Case File
• D. Photographs

Answer: (A)

A field notebook is a live, contemporaneous log of what you observe and do in the field. Its purpose is to capture date, time, location, and brief, objective descriptions of events, conditions, actions taken, and people involved as they occur. The emphasis on date and time matters because it creates an accurate timeline that can be trusted and later corroborated when writing reports or presenting findings.

Witness statements are collected separately and recorded in formal statements or reports, not as the running notes of field observations. A full case file encompasses the entire collection of documents, reports, evidence, and related materials, not just the succinct notes you jot in the moment. Photographs are evidence themselves and are stored with their own metadata and captions; they aren’t the content of the field notebook, though you might reference them in your notes.

So the items you’d record in a field notebook are the date, time, and brief descriptions of what you observed and did.