All of the fieldworkers were doctoral students from the various programs in the School of Education at New York University, and all were enrolled in course work in preparation for engaging in qualitative research. All were accomplished women and men with established careers in such areas as educational technology, teaching, school administration, nursing, and various allied specialties throughout the school. During their fieldwork, these doctoral students were supervised by the senior author or by other faculty or qualified staff associated with the SITE project.

The fieldworkers selected and studied families with whom they had no previous social ties. A selected family had to have at least one school-aged child living at home and had to have a computer at home. Fieldworkers informed families that the nature of their computer use was not an important criterion for their inclusion in the study. This strategy of selection, it was hoped, would allow us to study widely varying families, especially with regard to the educational computing of their children. Subsequent experience showed that, in fact, it did.

Each fieldworker used social contacts, school connections, and even such impersonal tactics as going to local computer stores in order to locate and select families. Since fieldworkers lived in the tristate area surrounding New York University and since they needed to make regular home visits, the final decision about which family to select was influenced by accessibility as well as the aforementioned criteria. Most fieldworkers were able to gain entrance into and establish rapport with their first-choice family This usually took anywhere from two to three weeks.