A precise knowledge of the polarization state of light is crucial in technologies that involve the generation and application of structured light fields. The implementation of efficient methods to determine and characterize polarization states is mandatory; more importantly, these structured light fields must be at any spatial location at a low expense. Here, we introduce a new characterization method that relies on a rather convenient description of electric fields without neglecting their 3D nature. This method is particularly suitable for highly focused fields, which exhibit important polarization contributions along their propagation direction in the neighborhood of the focal region; i.e., the contributions out of the planes transverse to the optical axis, conventionally used to specify the polarization state of these fields. As shown, the method allows the extraction of information about the three field components at relatively low computational and experimental costs. Furthermore, it also allows characterization of the polarization state of a field in a rather simple manner. To check the feasibility and reliability of the method, we determined both analytically and experimentally the local polarization states for a series of benchmark input fields with it, finding excellent agreement between the theory and experiment.