ethnographic research

Breaking Down Barriers – Using Ethnography to Build Cultural Understanding

Ethnography is a research method used to study human cultures and societies. At its core, ethnography is the study of human cultures and societies through observation and participation in their day-to-day activities.

Table of Contents

Ethnographers aim to gain an in-depth understanding of the culture they are studying by immersing themselves in it and observing it from within. This approach allows them to gather rich qualitative data that can help explain how people think, behave, interact with one another, and make sense of their world.

This research method is widely used across various fields such as anthropology, sociology , education, business, and more to gain insights into different cultures and ways of life.

Ethnography – An Introduction

Ethnography is a research method that involves the systematic study of human cultures and societies through observation and participation in their daily activities. It typically requires immersion in the culture being studied, often for an extended period of time, to gain a deep understanding of its norms, values, beliefs, and practices.

The key components of ethnography include participant observation, fieldwork, and data analysis.

Participant observation involves the researcher taking an active role in the culture they are studying by participating in its activities and observing its members’ behaviour. Fieldwork refers to the process of collecting data through direct observation, interviews, and other methods while living among the people being studied. Data analysis involves interpreting the data collected during fieldwork to develop insights into the culture under study.

Ethnography differs from other research methods like surveys or interviews in several ways. Surveys typically involve collecting data from a large group of people using standardized questions or measurements. Interviews involve asking individuals about their experiences or opinions on a particular topic. In contrast, ethnography emphasizes direct observation of cultural practices and behaviors within their natural context rather than relying on self-reported information.

Overall, ethnography provides a unique perspective on human cultures and societies that cannot be obtained through other research methods. By immersing themselves in a culture and experiencing it first-hand, ethnographers can gain insights into how people think, behave, and interact with one another that would be difficult to obtain through any other means.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is a research method used in ethnography and other social sciences that involves the researcher taking an active role in the culture or group being studied.

In participant observation, the researcher immerses themselves in the culture and participates in its activities while observing and recording their experiences. This approach allows the researcher to gain a deep understanding of the culture’s norms, values, beliefs, and practices from an insider’s perspective.

Participant observation typically involves several stages, including gaining entry into the culture or group being studied, establishing trust with its members, learning about its social structure and dynamics, participating in its activities while observing them, and collecting data through field notes or other methods.

The process is time-consuming and challenging, but it can provide rich qualitative data that would be difficult to obtain through other means.

Fieldwork is a research method used in ethnography and other social sciences that involves conducting research in the natural environment or “field” where the culture or group being studied is located. In the context of ethnography, fieldwork typically involves immersing oneself in the culture being studied to gain a deep understanding of its norms, values, beliefs, and practices.

During fieldwork, researchers may engage in participant observation by actively participating in the activities of the culture they are studying while observing and recording their experiences. They may also conduct interviews with members of the culture to gain additional insights into their perspectives and experiences.

Cultural Informant Interviews

Cultural informants are individuals who are knowledgeable about the culture being studied and can provide valuable information to researchers. The ethnographer interviews them to gain insights into their perspectives, experiences, and beliefs.

During cultural informant interviews, researchers ask open-ended questions to gather information about the society’s norms, values, beliefs, and practices. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the culture from the perspective of its members. Informants may be chosen based on their expertise in specific areas or because they are representative of particular groups within the culture being studied.

Cultural informant interviews can be conducted individually or in groups and may take place in person or remotely. They typically involve building rapport with informants over time to establish trust and create an open dialogue.

Analysing and Describing Ethnographic Findings

Analyzing and describing ethnographic findings involves interpreting the data collected during fieldwork in order to draw conclusions about the culture being studied. The anthropologist begins by organizing their field notes, transcripts, and other data into categories or themes that emerge from the data itself. This involves identifying recurring patterns, themes, or ideas that arise during observation or interviews.

Once the anthropologist has organized their data into categories or themes, they identify the key cultural concepts that emerge from their analysis. These may include values, beliefs, practices, symbols, or social structures that are central to the culture being studied.

The anthropologist then uses their data to describe the norms and behaviors that are common within the culture being studied. This could involve discussing how people interact with each other in social settings or how they communicate with one another.

To understand cultural practices and beliefs fully, it’s important for the anthropologist to provide context for them. One of the ways anthropologists achieve this aim is by using a style known as thick description .

Thick description refers to the practice of providing detailed, contextualized accounts of cultural phenomena. When writing anthropological reports, ethnographers aim to provide readers with enough information to understand the cultural context in which events or activities took place. This type of detailed description is essential for understanding the complexities of human cultures and societies.

Based on their analysis of the data, the anthropologist draws conclusions about what they have learned about the culture being studied. This could involve making generalizations about cultural values or identifying unique features of a particular group within the culture.

Finally, the anthropologist presents their findings in a clear and concise manner using appropriate qualitative research methods such as narrative description, thematic analysis, or grounded theory.

Best Practices for Conducting Ethnographic Research

Develop a clear research question: Before beginning your research, it’s important to have a well-defined research question that will guide your study and help you stay focused on what you want to learn.

Build rapport with participants: Ethnography often involves spending extended periods of time in the field and building relationships with members of the community being studied. It’s essential to establish trust and create an open dialogue with participants.

Use multiple methods: Ethnographers use a variety of data collection methods, including observation, interviews, surveys, and document analysis. Using multiple methods can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the culture being studied.

Maintain detailed field notes: Accurate and detailed field notes are crucial for ethnographic research as they provide a record of observations, conversations, and experiences that can be analyzed later.

Practice reflexivity: Reflexivity is the process of reflecting on one’s own role in the research process and how this may impact data collection and analysis. Ethnographers should be aware of their own biases and assumptions and actively work to minimize their influence on the study.

Ensure confidentiality: Confidentiality is critical in ethnographic research as participants may share personal information or engage in behaviors that could put them at risk if made public. Researchers must take steps to protect participant privacy and ensure that any information shared is kept confidential.

Analyze data systematically: After collecting data, it’s essential to analyze it systematically using established qualitative research methods such as coding, thematic analysis, or grounded theory.

By following these best practices, ethnographers can conduct rigorous and ethical research that provides valuable insights into human cultures and societies while also respecting the rights and privacy of participants.

How Ethnography Differs from Other Qualitative Methods

Ethnography differs from other qualitative research methods, such as focus groups or interviews, in two key ways.

First, the main aim of ethnographic research is the interpretation of the shared norms and beliefs of the community under study. This means that ethnographers are more interested in understanding how a group interacts with each other and their cultural worlds than they are in individual perspectives.

Second, ethnography relies heavily on fieldwork. This means that ethnographers must immerse themselves in the daily lives of the people they are researching in order to understand their culture. This can be done through direct observation or participation in activities. This means that ethnographers often live with the people they are researching for extended periods of time in order to really understand their culture.

The Ethical Considerations of Ethnographic Research

When conducting ethnographic research, there are a number of ethical considerations that need to be taken into account in order to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner. This is especially important when working with vulnerable populations.

The following are some of the challenges involved in conducting ethnographic research and the ethical considerations that need to be taken into account.

Informed Consent

Conducting anthropological research requires gaining the trust of those being studied. This can be a challenge, especially if the researcher is coming from a different culture.

It is important to build relationships of trust and mutual respect in order to conduct ethical research. This can be done by spending time getting to know the people you will be working with, learning about their culture and customs, and respecting their way of life. If people do not trust you, they will not participate in your research.

It is also important to obtain informed consent from those who will be participating in your research. This means that participants must be made aware of what the research entails, what their role in the research will be, and how their personal information will be used. Participants must also be given the opportunity to ask questions and withdraw from the study at any time.

Respecting Privacy and Confidentiality

Another ethical consideration is protecting the confidentiality of participants. This means keeping their information safe and ensuring that it will not be used for any purpose other than what was originally agreed upon.

In some cases, researchers may need to change the names of participants or use pseudonyms in order to protect their identity. Any recordings or notes that are made during the course of the research should also be kept confidential.

This can be a challenge in ethnographic research because the very nature of the methodology involves observing people in their natural environment. This means that researchers may inadvertently collect personal information about participants without their knowledge or consent. One way to overcome this challenge is to establish clear boundaries with participants at the beginning of the research process and make sure they are aware of what information will be collected and how it will be used.

Code of Ethics

All anthropologists are bound by a code of ethics which sets out principles for conducting responsible and ethical research. The code of ethics includes principles such as respect for human dignity, protecting participant welfare, minimizing harm, upholding confidentiality, and obtaining informed consent.

The Challenges of Conducting Ethnographic Research

The goal of ethnographic research is to understand how people interact with each other and the world around them. In order to do this, ethnographers immerse themselves in the lives of the people they are studying. This can be a challenge, both logistically and emotionally. Here are some of the challenges involved in conducting ethnographic research.

Gaining access to the people being studied

One of the biggest challenges in conducting ethnographic research is gaining access to the necessary people and places. This can be difficult for a number of reasons, including language barriers, unfamiliarity with local customs, and lack of personal connections.

One way to overcome this challenge is to partner with someone who is already familiar with the community you’re researching. This person can act as a guide and introduce you to key members of the community who can provide valuable insights into your research topic.

Another challenge faced by many ethnographers is gaining the cooperation of research subjects. This can be difficult because people are often reluctant to talk about sensitive topics or share personal information with strangers. One way to overcome this challenge is to build rapport with your research subjects by establishing trust and demonstrating your understanding of their culture and values. Only once you have gained their trust should you begin asking questions about your research topic.

Time Commitment

Another challenge is the time commitment required. In order to really understand a culture, an ethnographer needs to spend a significant amount of time observing and interacting with the people in that culture. This can be logistically difficult, especially if the society under study is located in a different country or region. It can also be emotionally challenging, as it requires an ethnographer to be open and vulnerable with the people they are studying.

Analysis and Interpretation

Once an ethnographer has collected their data, they then face the challenge of analysis and interpretation. This is difficult because ethnographers must not only understand the culture they are studying, but also their own culture and biases.

In addition, ethnographic data often takes the form of unstructured observations, interviews, and field notes, which can be challenging to organize and interpret. One way to overcome this challenge is to use data management software like NVivo or Atlas.ti to help you organize and analyse your data.

And finally, the ethnographer must find a way to communicate their findings to others who have not experienced the society first hand. This is where thick description is crucial.

Conclusion – Ethnography is a Powerful Tool

Ethnography is a powerful research method that allows anthropologists to study human cultures and societies in depth. Its strength lies in its ability to provide rich, detailed descriptions of cultural practices, beliefs, and values while also providing context for these phenomena.

Ethnography differs from other qualitative research methods in that it emphasizes the importance of long-term fieldwork and participant observation as a way of gaining deep insights into cultural phenomena. By immersing themselves in the culture being studied, ethnographers can gain a nuanced understanding of complex social processes and interactions.

As such, ethnography continues to be an important tool for anthropologists seeking to understand the diverse ways in which people live and interact with one another around the world.

Related Terminology:

Thick description: A type of ethnographic data that provides highly detailed, contextualized accounts of social phenomena.

Triangulation: A method used by ethnographers to corroborate their findings by collecting data from multiple sources.

Qualitative research : A type of research that uses inductive, observational methods to generate rich, detailed data about a particular phenomenon.

Quantitative research: A type of research that uses deductive, statistical methods to generate numerical data about a particular phenomenon.

Anthropology Glossary Terms starting with E

Ethnogenesis

Ethnosemantics

Ethnography

Ethnomusicology

Existentialism

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Qualitative research...

Qualitative research methodologies: ethnography

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Peer review
Scott Reeves , associate professor 1 ,
Ayelet Kuper , assistant professor 2 ,
Brian David Hodges , associate professor and vice chair (education) 3
1 Department of Psychiatry, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Centre for Faculty Development, and Wilson Centre for Research in Education, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street, Eaton South 1-565, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 2C4
2 Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Wilson Centre for Research in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M4N 3M5
3 Department of Psychiatry, Wilson Centre for Research in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 2C4
Correspondence to: S Reeves scott.reeves{at}utoronto.ca

The previous articles (there were 2 before this 1) in this series discussed several methodological approaches commonly used by qualitative researchers in the health professions. This article focuses on another important qualitative methodology: ethnography. It provides background for those who will encounter this methodology in their reading rather than instructions for carrying out such research.

What is ethnography?

Ethnography is the study of social interactions, behaviours, and perceptions that occur within groups, teams, organisations, and communities. Its roots can be traced back to anthropological studies of small, rural (and often remote) societies that were undertaken in the early 1900s, when researchers such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown participated in these societies over long periods and documented their social arrangements and belief systems. This approach was later adopted by members of the Chicago School of Sociology (for example, Everett Hughes, Robert Park, Louis Wirth) and applied to a variety of urban settings in their studies of social life.

The central aim of ethnography is to provide rich, holistic insights into people’s views and actions, as well as the nature (that is, sights, sounds) of the location they inhabit, through the collection of detailed observations and interviews. As Hammersley states, “The task [of ethnographers] is to document the culture, the perspectives and practices, of the people in these settings. The aim is to ‘get inside’ the way each group of people sees the world.” 1 Box 1 outlines the key features of ethnographic research.

Box 1 Key features of ethnographic research 2

A strong emphasis on exploring the nature of a particular social phenomenon, rather than setting out to test hypotheses about it

A tendency to work primarily with “unstructured data” —that is, data that have not been coded at the point of data collection as a closed set of analytical categories

Investigation of a small number of cases (perhaps even just one case) in detail

Analysis of data that involves explicit interpretation of the meanings and functions of human actions; the product of this analysis primarily takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations

Examples of ethnographic research within the health services literature include Strauss’s study of achieving and maintaining order between managers, clinicians, and patients within psychiatric hospital settings; Taxis and Barber’s exploration of intravenous medication errors in acute care hospitals; Costello’s examination of death and dying in elderly care wards; and Østerlund’s work on doctors’ and nurses’ use of traditional and digital information systems in their clinical communications. 3 4 5 6 Becker and colleagues’ Boys in White , an ethnographic study of medical education in the late 1950s, remains a classic in this field. 7

Newer developments in ethnographic inquiry include auto-ethnography, in which researchers’ own thoughts and perspectives from their social interactions form the central element of a study 8 ; meta-ethnography, in which qualitative research texts are analysed and synthesised to empirically create new insights and knowledge 9 ; and online (or virtual) ethnography, which extends traditional notions of ethnographic study from situated observation and face to face researcher-participant interaction to technologically mediated interactions in online networks and communities. 10

What should I be looking for in an ethnographic study?

Ethnographers typically gather participant observations, necessitating direct engagement and involvement with the world they are studying. Owing to the complex nature of social life, ethnographers need to record a variety of elements in their field notes (box 2).

Box 2 Nine observational dimensions and their descriptions 11

Space—Physical layout of the place(s)

Actor—Range of people involved

Activity—A set of related activities that occur

Object—The physical things that are present

Act—Single actions people undertake

Event—Activities that people carry out

Time—The sequencing of events that occur

Goal—Things that people are trying to accomplish

Feeling—Emotions felt and expressed

During their observations, ethnographers routinely use informal or conversational interviews, which allow them to discuss, probe emerging issues, or ask questions about unusual events in a naturalistic manner. Because of the “casual” nature of this type of interview technique it can be useful in eliciting highly candid accounts from individuals. Ethnographers also gather formal in-depth interviews and documentary data such as minutes of meetings, diaries, and photographs.

Participants or situations are sampled on an opportunistic or purposive basis. It is also usual for ethnographers to focus upon specific features (for example, medical ward rounds) that occur within a research setting.

Analysis of ethnographic data tends to be undertaken in an inductive thematic manner: data are examined to identify and to categorise themes and key issues that “emerge” from the data. Through a careful analysis of their data, using this inductive process, ethnographers generate tentative theoretical explanations from their empirical work.

Reflexivity (that is, the relationship a researcher shares with the world he or she is investigating) is a central element of ethnographic work, owing to the relationship the ethnographer shares with participants and the ethical issues that flow from this close relationship. Within research reports, reflexivity is presented in the form of a description of the ethnographer’s ideas and experiences, which can be used by readers to judge the possible impact of these influences on a study.

To enhance the quality of their work, ethnographers will often provide a detailed or “thick description” of the research setting and its participants, which will typically be based on many hours of direct observation and interviews with several key informants. 12

In addition, ethnographic work commonly uses methodological triangulation—a technique designed to compare and contrast different types of methods to help provide more comprehensive insights into the phenomenon under study. This type of triangulation can be very useful, as sometimes what people say about their actions can contrast with their actual behaviour. 13 Box 3 provides further information about triangulation and the different types that can be employed within ethnographic research.

Box 3 Triangulation in ethnography

Triangulation is a term linked to navigation or surveying: people discover their position on a map by taking bearings on landmarks, and where the lines intersect is where they are positioned. As well as methodological triangulation, Denzin 14 outlines three other types:

Data triangulation, which uses different sources of data to examine a phenomenon in several different settings and different points in time or space

Investigator triangulation, which uses multiple researchers to generate a complex range of perspectives on the data

Theory triangulation, in which researchers approach data with different concepts and theories to see how each helps to understand the data

Ethnographers often draw upon social sciences theory (for example, interactionism, feminism, and postmodernism) to strengthen their research focus and analyses. (The use of theory within qualitative research is examined in more depth in another paper in this series). See box 3 for an example of an ethnographic study.

Box 4 An ethnographic study of professional relationships

This ethnographic study took place in a large general hospital in the United Kingdom. 15 It aimed to understand, in depth, the nature of hospital based nurse-doctor relationships in the wake of changes to health policy and to the delivery of professional education.

The author, a nurse, undertook participant observations for 10 months, during which she worked as a nurse (on an unpaid basis) with doctors, nurses, managers, and auxiliary staff on both a surgical and a medical ward. To gain a candid insight into these professionals’ views, she undertook informal interviews with staff while they worked together. She also collected 57 tape recorded interviews, each lasting 60 to 90 minutes, with nurses, doctors, auxiliaries, and managers. These explored in more depth participants’ views of their interprofessional relationships. Documentary data were also generated through analysis of organisational documents and through attendance at professional and managerial meetings.

The author undertook an inductive approach to data analysis, in which meanings emerged from the data through exploration of all data sets. In addition, she used data from different sources (observations, interviews, documentary data) to generate a more comprehensive understanding in the emerging analysis. The author drew upon negotiated order perspective—a sociological theory developed by Strauss to frame and illuminate the findings from her analysis. She also discussed her reflexive role in the study, and as a nurse, how that helped her secure access into this clinical setting, and how it helped her attain richer insights into the nature of nurse-doctor relationships in relation to how they negotiate professional boundaries in their clinical work.

Why choose ethnography?

Ethnographic research offers several advantages. For example, the use of participant observation enables ethnographers to “immerse” themselves in a setting, thereby generating a rich understanding of social action and its subtleties in different contexts.

Participant observation also gives ethnographers opportunities to gather empirical insights into social practices that are normally “hidden” from the public gaze. Additionally, since it aims to generate holistic social accounts, ethnographic research can identify, explore, and link social phenomena which, on the surface, have little connection with each other.

Ethnographic research can be problematic. Owing to the relatively long periods of time ethnographers spend talking to participants and observing actions, it can be difficult to secure repeated access, especially if institutional gatekeepers are concerned that the research may cast their organisation in a poor light. Obtaining formal approval from research ethics committees can be complicated. The direct interaction that occurs between ethnographers and patients or clinicians during fieldwork can be regarded with suspicion, as traditional notions of health services research rest on researchers’ detachment rather than involvement. Comprehensively recording the multifaceted nature of social action that occurs within a clinic or ward is a difficult task, as a range of temporal, spatial, and behavioural elements need to be documented (see box 1). In addition, the unpredictability of social (and clinical) life often means that ethnographers have to be flexible, patient, and persistent in their work, as data collection activities can be disrupted or access withdrawn as local circumstances and politics change.

Ethnography is a highly useful methodology for addressing a range of research questions within the health professions. In particular, it can generate rich and detailed accounts of clinicians’ professional and interprofessional relationships, their interactions with patients, and their approaches to delivering care, as well as in-depth accounts of patients’ care experiences. Understanding the foundations of ethnography and its key elements will help readers when they come across reports that use this methodology. A later article in this series will provide readers with a more formal framework to use when critically appraising qualitative research papers, including ethnographies. Readers interested in undertaking such research should refer to the works listed in box 4.

Box 4 Further reading

Atkinson P, Coffey A, Delamont S, Lofland J, Lofland L, eds. Handbook of ethnography . London: Sage, 2001.

Fetterman D. Ethnography: step by step . 2nd ed. London: Sage, 1988.

Fielding N. Ethnography. In: Researching social life . London: Sage, 1993:155-71.

Hammersley M, Atkinson P. Ethnography: principles in practice . 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1995.

Spradley J. The ethnographic interview . New York: Holt, 1979.

Journal articles

Atkinson P, Pugsley L. Making sense of ethnographic research in medical education. Med Educ 2005;39:228-34.

Charmaz K, Oleson V. Ethnographic research in medical sociology: its foci and distinctive contributions. Sociol Methods Res 1997;25:452-94.

Fine G. Ten lies of ethnography. J Contemp Ethnogr 1993;22:267-94.

Jeffrey B, Troman G. Time for ethnography. Br Educ Res J 30:535-48

Savage J. Ethnography and health care. BMJ 2000;321:1400-2.

Summary points

Ethnography is the study of social interactions, behaviours, and perceptions that occur within teams, organisations, and communities.

Ethnographic studies typically gather participant observations and interviews; through using these methods ethnographers can immerse themselves in settings and can generate rich understanding of the social action that occurs

Owing to the relationship the ethnographer shares with research participants, reflexivity (whereby ethnographers describe the relationship they shares with the people and world they are studying) occupies a central element of this type of research

Ethnographers commonly triangulate (that is, compare and contrast) interview and observation methods to enhance the quality of their work; this technique is important as what people say about their behaviour can contrast with their actual actions

Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1020

Related to doi: , 10.1136/bmj.a288
doi: , 10.1136/bmj.39602.690162.47
doi: , 10.1136/bmj.a879
doi: , 10.1136/bmj.a949
doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1035

This is the third in a series of six articles that aim to help readers to critically appraise the increasing number of qualitative research articles in clinical journals. The series editors are Ayelet Kuper and Scott Reeves.

For a definition of general terms relating to qualitative research, see the first article in this series

Funding: None.

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

↵ Hammersley M. What’s wrong with ethnography? Methodological explorations. London: Routledge, 1992 .
↵ Hammersley M, Atkinson P. Ethnography: principles in practice. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1995
↵ Strauss A, Schatzman D, Ehrlich R, Bucher M, Sabshin C. The hospital and its negotiated order. In: Freidson E, ed. The hospital in modern society . New York: Free Press, 1963 :147-69.
↵ Taxis K, Barber N. Causes of intravenous medication errors: an ethnographic study. Qual Saf Health Care 2003 ; 12 : 343 -7. OpenUrl Abstract / FREE Full Text
↵ Costello J. Nursing older dying patients: findings from an ethnographic study of death and dying in elderly care wards. J Adv Nurs 2001 ; 35 : 59 -68. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
↵ Østerlund C. Genre combinations: a window into dynamic communication practices. J Manage Inf Syst 2007 ; 23 : 81 -108. OpenUrl
↵ Becker H, Geer B, Hughes E, Strauss A. Boys in white: student culture in medical school . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961 .
↵ Reed-Danahay D. Auto-ethnography: rewriting the self and the social . London: Berg, 1997 .
↵ Britten N, Campbell R, Pope C, Donovan J, Morgan M, Pill R. Using meta-ethnography to synthesise qualitative research: a worked example. J Health Serv Res Policy 2002 ; 7 : 209 -15. OpenUrl Abstract / FREE Full Text
↵ Hine C. Virtual ethnography . London: Sage, 2000 .
↵ Spradley J. Participant observation. New York: Holt, 1980
↵ Geertz C. The interpretation of cultures: selected essays . New York: Basic Books, 1973 .
↵ Strong P. The ceremonial order of the clinic . London: Routledge, 1977 .
↵ Denzin N. The research act in sociology . London:Butterworth, 1970 .
↵ Allen D. The nursing-medical boundary: a negotiated order? Sociol Health Illn 1997 ; 19 : 498 -520. OpenUrl CrossRef Web of Science

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The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edn)

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12 Ethnography

Anthony Kwame Harrison, Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech

Published: 02 September 2020
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This chapter introduces ethnography as a distinct research and writing tradition. It opens with a discussion of ethnography’s current fashionability within transdisciplinary academic spaces and some of the associated challenges. The next section provides a historical overview of ethnography’s emergence as a professionalized research practice within the fields of anthropology and sociology. Focusing on ethnography as a research methodology, the chapter outlines several key attributes that distinguish it from other forms of participant observation–oriented research; provides a general overview of the central paradigms that ethnographers claim and/or move between; and spotlights three principal research methods that most ethnographers utilize—namely, participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing. The final section of the chapter introduces a research disposition called ethnographic comportment , defined as a politics of positionality that reflects both ethnographers’ awarenesses of and their accountabilities to the research tradition they participate in.

Introduction

In a classic 1929 American Mercury article on racial passing and investigating lynchings, the future executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Walter White, opened with an observation:

In any American village, North or South, East or West, there is no problem which cannot be solved in half an hour by the morons who lounge about the village store. World peace, or the lack of it, the tariff, sex, religion, the settlement of the war debts, short skirts, Prohibition, the carryings-on of the younger generation, the superior moral rectitude of country people over city dwellers (with a wistful eye on urban sins)—all these controversial subjects are disposed of quickly and finally by the bucolic wise men. (White, 1929 , p. 77)

Ethnographers are neither morons nor bucolic wise men. If called on, they may supply truncated answers to difficult questions. But they do this with an understanding that they are merely scratching the surface or offering something along the lines of sweeping tendencies regarding what are typically complicated and often contradictory aspects of human organization and social relations. The closer and deeper one looks, the more one sees. For this reason, ethnography is not particularly well suited for the kinds of business or policy-oriented research that requires statistically verifiable findings or strict evidentiary bases for direct and uncomplicated action plans (Jones, 2010 ). Still, references to ethnography and/or ethnographic thisses-and-thats increasingly appear in these and numerous other settings. To fully appreciate the value of ethnographies, it is important to read them in their entirety. Ethnographies are not built for efficiency in research practice or in communicating research results.

As a reflexive, intersubjective research tradition—that speaks to audiences’ hearts as well as to their minds—ethnography is most at home in spaces where complexity, nuance, and betwixt-and-betweenness are valued. Thus, there is a palpable tension between this research methodology—founded on patience and aspirations for comprehensive understandings—and the increasingly neoliberal academic environments, where the practices of ethnography have historically been nurtured and where a majority of practicing ethnographers continue to reside, settings where, increasingly, time, volume of output, and tangibility of results are key factors determining what is valued. We see this among graduate students of the early 21st century, who are progressively more pressured to have solid publication records upon completing their degrees—a practice that encourages some advisors to discourage students from pursuing ethnographic research. Another consequence of this development is the gradual erosion of ethnographic standards as shorter durations of research and shortened pathways to confirmable findings are accepted, if not heralded, as measures of competency. Under such conditions, the invisible work of ethnography (Forsythe, 1999 ), and the associated belief that anyone can do it, amplifies its current fashionability in problematic ways.

This chapter provides a foundation for understanding ethnography as a research methodology and genre of research reporting. While celebrating ethnography’s flexibility and generative potential—indeed, its refusal to be contained within fixed definitions—I also present it as a distinct research tradition, guided by a series of evolving conventions and commitments. This emphasis on precision is motivated by what I see as a multipronged crisis within the transforming field of ethnographic research. Factors influencing this crisis include but are not limited to: (a) ethnography’s place within neoliberal universities and associated spaces where efforts toward increasing efficiency reign; (b) a “transdisciplinary romance with ethnography” (Kazubowski-Houston & Magnat, 2017 ) that, too often, leads undertrained and underinvested researchers to claim the label—thus, in my view, doing violence to ethnography in both a figurative and a literal sense (Ingold, 2014 ); and (c) increased institutional surveillance and “methodological conservatism,” which creates hostile environments for ethnographers seeking to have their work approved by oversight bodies and agencies (Lincoln, 2005 ). At the same time, ethnography has qualities that make it particularly well suited for grasping and representing complex social phenomena and the contentious bases of knowing during these difficult times. Methodologically, ethnography flourishes in the liminal spaces between research design and improvisation. Through their critical engagements with its sometimes troubled history, trained ethnographers tend to align with marginalized perspectives and the communities they emanate from. Representationally, ethnography refuses to reduce the social world to simplistic binaries or neatly bracketed findings. In the following pages, I elaborate on these and other qualities of the ethnographic enterprise. Specifically, I present ethnography as a distinct methodology—rooted in the professionalization of anthropology and, to a lesser degree, sociology as academic fields—with a particular set of defining attributes, paradigmatic observances, and research conventions.

Defining Ethnography

The term ethnography references both a research and an inscription (i.e., writing process to written product) practice. Ethnography is research in that it describes a methodology (distinguished from a research method in the section Ethnography as Methodology) usually conceptualized as involving participant observations within a community or field of study. 1 Thus, a person can speak of doing ethnographic research among Vermont maple sugarers (Lange, 2017 ) or among people participating in a translocal cultural phenomenon who may not even consciously identify as a group (Amit, 2000 ). At the same time, it is an inscription practice in that the products of ethnographic research—typically books like Edmund Leach’s classic Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) or Riché J. Daniel Barnes’s Raising the Race (2016)—are referred to as ethnographies. 2

Typically, greater academic attention is given to discussions of ethnography as research. However, to the extent that evaluations of and inferences about research are derived from the resulting written account, this focus on ethnography as research may be overblown. Indeed, since at least its postmodern turn (see Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Marcus & Fischer, 1986 ), considerable attention has fallen on ethnography as a literary convention. Scholars have additionally argued that writing practices are integral to ethnographic data collection and analysis and therefore should not be treated separately (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011 ; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005 ; Sanjeck, 1990 ). 3 Elaborating on a concept that I call ethnographic comportment , toward the close of this chapter, I argue that most researchers are guided by a “textual awareness” (Van Maanen, 2011 , p. 158)—an imagined end product that they are working toward—that influences them variously throughout all stages of an ethnographic project, from conception to publication. Nevertheless, if one is looking for a standard definition of ethnography, a research-oriented definition such as the one offered by Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson (1995) is quite typical:

[Ethnography involves] participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions … [and] collecting whatever [other] data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research. (p. 1)

Such a simple, straightforward definition highlights ethnography’s resemblance to “the routine ways in which people make sense of the world everyday” (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995 , p. 2)—thus making it appear to be something anyone can do. But to paraphrase something my colleague Carol A. Bailey once told me, no one would think of doing multiple linear regressions without statistical data analysis training, yet, quite regularly, people with no background in qualitative research claim to be doing ethnography (see also Schwandt, 2000 , p. 206n3). Commenting on the popularity of ethnography in consumer research, Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny ( 2007 ) remarked,

A myriad of research techniques … (from the few-minute in-store intercept interview, to the one-hour “depth interview,” to the online focus group) have become redefined as “ethnographic” with barely any change in the underlying assumptions regarding method or analysis. Researchers have transformed themselves into “ethnographers” with few changes in practice beyond the name. (pp. 13–14)

Although these observations are specific to a single nonacademic arena, I argue that, even within the academy, the proliferation of ethnography warrants similar sentiments. In his book The Cosmopolitan Canopy (2011), Elijah Anderson defined folk ethnography as “a form of people watching that allows individuals informally to gather evidence in social interactions that supports their own viewpoints or transforms their commonsense understandings of social life” (p. xv). Although Anderson views this as a positive development, it concerns me that the distinction between folk ethnography and ethnography is blurring. In this chapter, I argue against the notion of ethnography as a qualitative research free-for-all, open for anyone, regardless of background or training, to undertake. As Diana E. Forsythe ( 1999 ) asserted, it is not “just a matter of common sense” (p. 130). Ethnography is a specific approach to research and writing about it, with a rich history and established yet evolving set of guiding principles. For those of us who take ethnography seriously, it involves training (usually through advanced coursework and mentorship), reflection, and accountability.

Historical Foundations of Ethnography

As a research tradition, ethnography’s roots are most firmly planted in the fields of anthropology and qualitative sociology: the former most often credited to the innovations of Polish-born, British-trained Bronislaw Malinowski and the latter usually attributed to a collection of researchers associated with the University of Chicago—commonly referred to as the Chicago School. Though these origin myths have been widely discussed and debated, and some treatments suggest ethnography began as early as the Greeks and Romans (Wax, 1971 ), I nevertheless cast ethnography as a relatively recent methodology, which came of age with the professionalization of both disciplines during the early decades of the 20th century.

In my chapter for the first edition of the Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research , I discussed this history in great detail (see Harrison, 2014 ) and will therefore offer only a truncated version here. 4 During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, on both sides of the Atlantic, the nascent academic field of social/cultural anthropology crystallized around a reorientation away from the traditional model of armchair theorizing and toward a serious investment in ways of going about collecting and using data. 5 The various learned societies dedicated to anthropological interests that emerged during the 19th century relied primarily on the reports of colonial administrators, military officers, missionaries, traders, and other travelers for their information. The new class of professional anthropological intellectuals who came into being through these organizations prioritized the need for more formal—and less prejudiced, sensationalized, and unequivocally racist—standards of scientific reporting. In this interest, various sets of anthropological questionnaires and field guides were developed, initially for untrained travelers but, over time, increasingly toward the goal of fostering the most “precise and exacting” methods among field anthropologists (Urry, 1972 , p. 51). The most famous of these was Notes and Queries on Anthropology , which appeared in six iterations between 1874 and 1951 (Urry, 1972 ). Another effort to circumvent the limitations of untrained, biased, and otherwise disinterested reporting involved expeditions featuring teams of specialized experts—most notably the Cambridge Torres Straits expedition of 1898 (Stocking, 1983a ) and a series of privately funded and Bureau of American Ethnology–sponsored expeditions to the American Southwest occurring throughout the late 19th century (Judd, 1967 ).

Malinowski, the famed “founding father” of ethnography (Jones, 2010 ), came to anthropology after earning a doctorate in physics and mathematics from Jagiellonian University in Poland. He arrived in England—one of the key centers of anthropological thought—at precisely the right moment to benefit from the decades-long debates regarding appropriate ethnographic data collection methods that had been taking place. A year before his arrival, in a 1909 meeting of the principals from Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics, it was decided that the term ethnography would be used in specific reference to “descriptive accounts of non-literate peoples”—as distinct from the historical and comparative-based term ethnology (Radcliffe-Brown, 1952 , p. 276). We can thus mark this meeting as arguably the first collective effort to delineate ethnography as the principle data collection method within the rapidly professionalizing field. 6

Arriving in England, Malinowski immediately connected with a small circle of scholars, dedicated to anthropological interests, calling themselves the Cambridge School. This group included Alfred Cort Haddon, William H. R. Rivers, and Charles Seligman, all of whom had participated in the 1898 Torres Straits expedition. The quality of the various anthropological writing projects Malinowski had undertaken prior to landing in England—including what would become his first book, The Family among the Australian Aborigines (1913/1963)—undoubtedly facilitated his acceptance into this distinguished group. Still, Malinowski’s emergence as the most recognized figure in the development of ethnography can largely be attributed to timing. At the time of his arrival, members of the Cambridge School were already grappling with many of the ethnographic revelations that Malinowski would eventually put forward in his seminal work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922/1966). Malinowski can be distinguished as the last member of the Cambridge School to conduct fieldwork prior to the outbreak of World War I (Stocking, 1983b , p. 82) and the first professionally trained anthropologist to carry out research according to the most recent methodological advances of the time (Kuper, 1996 , p. 7). Consequently, when Argonauts was published a few years after the war, it stood alone as an implementation and representation of the culmination of prewar Cambridge School theorizing.

Malinowski embarked on his South Pacific fieldwork in 1914—carrying with him the 1912 edition of Notes and Queries , which had been considerably revised by Rivers (Myers, 1923 ). After a 6-month “apprentice’s trail run” on the island of Mailu in southern New Guinea (Kuper, 1996 , p. 12), the young researcher would more famously carry out two extensive periods—of a year each, 1915–1916 and 1917–1918—in the Trobriand Islands. During his initial Mailu fieldwork, Malinowski realized that his research became more productive when isolated from the prejudicial influences of the European administrators, missionaries, and traders who were also present on the island. Writing about this experience in Argonauts , he recounted, “It was not until I was alone in the district that I began to make some headway” (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , p. 6). This revelation sparked one of Malinowski’s most notable contributions to the practice of ethnography, which George Stocking ( 1983b ) described as “a shift in the primary locus of investigation, from the deck of the mission ship or the verandah of the mission station to the teeming center of the village” (p. 93). Such a positional shift facilitated a corresponding adjustment to his ethnographic posture:

In this type of work, it is good for the Ethnographer sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going on. 7 … Out of such plunges into the life of the native … I have carried away a distinct feeling that their behavior, their manner of being, in all sorts of tribal transactions, became more transparent and easily understandable than it had before. (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , pp. 21–22)

In his preface to Argonauts of the Western Pacific , esteemed anthropologist James George Frazier hailed it as a “remarkable record of anthropological research” by someone who had “lived as a native among the natives” (J. G. Frazier, 1922 / 1966 , p. vii). For his part, Malinowski was exceedingly deliberate in foregrounding his methodological “innovations.” Thus, the myth of Malinowski—as the first field researcher to voluntarily remove himself from colonial quarters, (essentially) cut off all ties with “civilization,” and immerse himself in the world of “savages” as a methodological imperative for understanding their world—soon took legs. His prescriptive methods for doing this included long-term residence by a trained researcher; learning the local language rather than relying on interpreters; collecting as much data as possible on as wide a range of activities as possible—from the spectacular and ceremonial to the everyday and mundane—and taking copious field notes; and, when possible, partaking in social activities as a participant observer.

One of the most rehearsed explanations of ethnography, contained within the pages of Argonauts , is Malinowski’s oft-cited goal of “grasp[ing] the native’s point of view” (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , p. 25). This decree to recognize and (to some degree) prioritize the subjectivity of non-Western peoples marked a transformative moment in how anthropology was practiced. No longer simply viewed as the objects of study, the perspectives of rational native actors provided the platform for developing anthropology’s relativist doctrines. By advocating for the internal logics underlying each culture, anthropology came to serve a critical role in exposing the prejudice and racism surrounding evaluations of cultural difference (Baker, 2010 ). 8 Together, Malinowski’s prescriptions amounted to a methodological manifesto (Strathern, 1987 ) that championed experiential modes of understanding, contextualization, and the distinction between ideal and actual behavior as signaling the capacity for agency within social structures.

In the most celebrated histories of anthropology, the idea of participant observation–based fieldwork, which is at the core of modern ethnography, came into being through these methodological advancements. Yet, the myth of the “Malinowskian Revolution” (Kuper, 1996 , p. 32) belies the tremendous effort and attention toward refining anthropological research methods that were taking place prior to his arrival in England, as well as across the Atlantic among Franz Boas and his students (see Harrison, 2014 ; Lassiter & Campbell, 2010 ). Although Malinowski was not singly responsible for inventing these ethnographic standards, his archetype status has been significant to their reification. Furthermore, his position during the interwar period as England’s “only master ethnographer” helped him to further cement his progenitor status (Kuper, 1996 , p. 1). 9 For most of the 20th century and now continuing into the 21st, the image of “going off” to a fieldwork site far removed from the university community one is a part of, for a minimum of 1 year, has been a rite of passage within sociocultural anthropology; and for much of this time, the importance of conducting research in non-Western societies—what some have critiqued as anthropology’s intrinsic process of Othering (Deloria, 1969 ; Magubane & Faris, 1985 )—was rationalized as “absolutely essential” to the development of an anthropological perspective (Mead, 1952 , p. 346).

Far and away the most celebrated ethnographic conventions practiced outside anthropology came from a collection of researchers associated with the University of Chicago’s department of sociology. Generally speaking, the Chicago School 10 formed through the combined influences of Malinowskian fieldwork methodologies and German phenomenological theory (Jones, 2010 ). Through their conceptualization of urban life as an assemblage of “natural areas” or “little communities,” researchers affiliated with the Chicago school, under the direction of Robert E. Park, imagined the city as a social laboratory through which to examine secular differences—primarily oriented around ethnicity and various forms of civic otherness. With an extensive background in newspaper work and having served as “a sort of secretary” to Tuskegee Institute founder and notable African American spokesman Booker T. Washington (Faris, 1967 , p. 28), Park arrived in Chicago in 1913 with keen interests in issues surrounding urban life, race relations, ethnic heterogeneity, and processes of assimilation. Soon thereafter, Park dedicated himself to training graduate students and, indeed, several of the most significant works to come out of the program during the interwar period were authored by his students (Blumer, 1998 ). 11

While ethnography has long-standing roots in sociology, its centrality to the discipline has never matched its position as the “hallmark methodology” of anthropology (Sunderland & Denny, 2007 , p. 13). From the outset, sociology’s ethnographic efforts were firmly intertwined with anthropology. 12 Thus, although Chicago sociologists gave a good deal of attention to particular aspects of methodological training, their most inspired forays into fieldwork were often characterized as a closer-to-home version of what anthropologists do. 13 We can see this in Park’s justifications for the kinds of research he was most interested in advancing. In an important essay advocating for the scientific value of researching the city, Park explained:

Anthropology, the science of man, has been mainly concerned up to the present with the study of primitive peoples. But civilized man is quite as interesting an object of investigation.… The same patient methods of observation which anthropologists like Boas and Lowie have expended on the study of the life and manners of the North American Indian might be even more fruitfully employed in the investigation of the customs, beliefs, social practices, and general conceptions of life prevalent in Little Italy on the lower North Side in Chicago, or in recording the more sophisticated folkways of the inhabitants of Greenwich Village and the neighborhood of Washington Square, New York. (Park, 1925/1967 , p. 3)

Years later, in describing his own attraction to this ethnographic tradition, Howard S. Becker ( 1999 ) explained, “You had all the romance of anthropology but could sleep in your own bed and eat decent food” (p. 8).

Still, the model of urban-based fieldwork put forth by Chicago School sociologists was an important predecessor to the way ethnography is thought of and practiced today. For much of the 20th century, anthropological field research focused on small, isolated communities where it was possible to get to know most members, map out kinship relations, and, at least, imagine that one was getting a comprehensive portrayal of society. 14 In the early 21st century, virtually all ethnographers adopt a topic-oriented approach, which focuses on one or more specified aspects of and/or social networks within what are understood to be much more complex and globally interconnected societies. As a result of the metropolitan settings of their research, urban sociologists, unlike their colleagues in anthropology, were compelled to acknowledge that they were dealing with specific dimensions of social life and/or subcultures that were situated within larger societal contexts.

The origins of ethnography as a professionalized methodological (research) and representational (writing) practice are most squarely situated within the discipline of anthropology. Recognizing these foundations in no way implies that ethnography is the exclusive purview of anthropology or, for that matter, that anthropologists should have exclusive right in determining what does and does not qualify as ethnography (Atkinson, 2017 ). Indeed, some of the most significant methodological considerations leading up to ethnography’s now-standard insistence on reflexivity (see the section Ethnographic Comportment) issued from the application of sociology’s symbolic interactionist theories to circumstances surrounding the ethnographic encounter (Berreman, 1962 ; Junker, 1960 ); and today many of the most exciting works surrounding ethnography issue from transdisciplinary spaces. I therefore echo Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston and Virginie Magnat’s ( 2017 ) call for “coalition and collaboration between like-minded ethnographers across the social-sciences, the arts, and the humanities” (p. 11). Yet these historical foundations continue to serve as methodological anchors for ethnographers.

Ethnography as Methodology

In discussing ethnography, commentators sometimes incorrectly treat it as a method rather than a methodology. The difference is significant. A method is simply a tool or technique used to collect and/or analyze data. Ethnographers typically utilize a variety of tools and techniques during the course of their research, including but not limited to establishing rapport; selecting informants; using a range of interview and/or focus group forms; making observations—both participatory and nonparticipatory—and writing field notes based on them; conducting surveys, genealogies, and domain analyses; mapping fields; transcribing texts; and coding data. 15 In contrast, methodologies are established norms of inquiry that are by and large adhered to within distinct research traditions. A methodology, therefore, involves theoretical, ethical, political, and at times moral orientations to research, which guide the decisions researchers make, including their choice of methods. Accordingly, it can be thought of as a philosophy of research practice, analysis, and description. Later in the chapter, I detail three of the most fundamental methods that ethnographers commonly utilize—namely, participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviews. However, first I outline several key attributes that, in my view, contribute to any instance of research being ethnographic and then highlight three philosophical positions—or what I call paradigms —that ethnographers orient themselves in relation to when conducting research.

Ethnographic Attributes

In this section I outline five essential priorities that distinguish ethnography. I offer these, in part, as a corrective to what I regard as the casual and commonplace misappropriation of it as a stand-in for all types of qualitative research (Kazubowski-Houston & Magnat, 2017 ). Building on my earlier definition, these attributes should be regarded as important orienting principles that scholars trained in ethnography and aware of its historicity hold in common.

Ethnography and Culture

Harry F. Wolcott asserted that the critical attribute distinguishing ethnography from other forms of qualitative research is a focus on describing and interpreting cultural behavior. In other words, at its core an ethnography must include an intentional engagement with and “working resolution” toward understanding culture (Wolcott, 1987 , p. 45). Wolcott called this ethnographic intent . The specifics of this “working resolution” may vary. Culture, according to Stephen A. Tyler ( 1969 ), provides the framework for recognizing and describing how “people make order out of what appears … to be utter chaos” (p. 6). Yet for the inquiring ethnographer, culture might be conceptualized as being revealed through people’s behaviors, the expressed ideals that guide such behaviors, or the discovery of underlying frameworks through which situational choices are made. Each of these, or some combination, can have implications for how ethnographic researchers go about their craft.

Debates over a precise definition of culture notwithstanding, ethnography has traditionally rested on a principle of cultural comparison, perhaps best reflected in the anthropological maxim of “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” For earlier generations of ethnographers—primarily anthropologists and sociologists (see the section Historical Foundations of Ethnography)—this was accomplished by traveling to starkly different social settings, which brought about the inevitable comparisons with the home “culture” (as the term was then understood 16 ). As the lens of ethnographic inquiry expanded to include spaces and places that did not initially appear to be particularly distinct from the ethnographer’s home (Messerschmidt, 1981 ), this comparative mode of sense-making became more implicit than explicit. The native ethnographer, for instance, conducting research in her own community, would appear to start from the same cultural foundations as the people she (participant) observes. Yet, as a trained ethnographer—someone who has read cultural theory and been exposed to several cross-cultural ethnographic studies—she makes sense of her observations in relation to the wealth of documented scholarship on cultural diversity. 17 Thus, she is less likely to generalize distinct cultural practices as the “normal way” people do things and more apt to frame her observations and understandings in conversation with foundational and recent thinking about culture.

Ethnography and Contextualization

Ethnographies prioritize contextualization, meaning that particular people and the situations they find themselves in are best understood in relation to broader factors that impact them—including, but not limited to, historical, local, political, economic, and religious factors. Anthropology, in particular, has historically recognized interconnections and mutual influences between various aspects of social life—or what anthropologists call holism . Following from this, ethnographers take an open-minded, inductive approach to what might potentially be considered data. In other fields of research where deductive reasoning —that is, the idea that truth follows from a sequence of conditional premises that can be empirically verified—is prioritized, efforts are made to silence external noises in the interest of focusing on what researchers determine are the most salient factors and variables. The inductive reasoning that guides ethnographic research starts from the assumption that such noises have consequence—they not only impact social conditions but also, at times, reflect deeper structural workings of culture.

Contextualization also impacts situational constructions of meaning. To illustrate what I mean here, I turn to the work of Clifford Geertz ( 1973 ), who famously defined ethnography as “an elaborate venture in … ‘thick description’ ” (p. 6). Referencing a thought experiment conducted by philosopher Gilbert Ryle ( 1971 ), Geertz elaborated on thick description through the example of a rapidly contracting eyelid. Whether such action amounts to an involuntary twitch of the eye or a “conspiratorial signal to a friend” (i.e., a wink) is entirely contextual. Accordingly, a thin description of behavior—“her left eye blinked”—tells us very little. Through understanding such things as the circumstances under which the blink occurred, the intention of the blinker, the prevalent social codes that may or may not mark the blink as meaningful, and whether this meaning was received and understood, we get a better sense of what is going on. Thick description, then, in the words of anthropologist Karin Narayan ( 2012 ), can be summarized as “layering meaning into closely observed details” (p. 8). Noticing and describing something as subtle and instantaneous as a blink requires careful attention to detail; it means observing social life with the same heightened sensitivity that we use when perceiving works of art (Willis, 2000 ). Yet, without proper contextualization, such descriptions have limited ethnographic value.

Ethnography as Iterative

In addition to being governed by inductive principles—meaning that research “starts from the data rather than from a hypothesis to be tested, or even from a fixed research question” (Hammersley, 2008 , p. 69)—ethnography proceeds as an iterative mode of inquiry. By this I mean that ethnographers continually re-engage with their research questions, fundamental assumptions, methods of inquiry, and accumulated data toward the goal of refining their work—which can sometimes include making a radical change in direction. Consequently, ethnographic research designs must be flexible enough to allow for the expected surprises and misadventures that arise when an individual (serving as a research instrument) engages in the daily lives of other people—who are inevitably continuing along the unforeseeable journeys that are their lives—for a prolonged period of time. Even at its most scientific, ethnography is resolutely a human science conducted in a real-world laboratory. As such, the ethnographic enterprise is saturated with circumstances, situations, and personalities that are unanticipated and often uncontrollable. Barbara Tedlock ( 2000 ) elaborated:

No matter how much care the ethnographer devotes to the project, its success depends upon more than individual effort. It is tied to outside forces, including local, national, and sometimes even international relationships that make research possible as well as to a readership that accepts the endeavor as meaningful. (p. 466)

Indeed, one of the most predictable aspects of ethnographic research is its unpredictability, so much so that statements along the lines of “I began my research intending to study X but wound up studying Y ” are now standard ethnographic writing conventions. I would go so far as to suggest that an absence of such sentiments (i.e., everything working out according to plan) is greeted with more suspicion than their presence.

Recognizing how ethnographic data and interpretation evolve simultaneously, James Spradley ( 1980 ) offered a cyclical model of ethnographic inquiry—what he calls the ethnographic research cycle —as distinct from the linear research models (i.e., define the problem, formulate hypotheses, gather and analyze data, draw conclusions) found in the other social sciences. According to Spradley ( 1980 ), each phase of ethnographic inquiry (data collection and analysis) informs new questions:

The cycle cannot wait until you have collected a large amount of data.… You need to analyze your fieldnotes after each period of fieldwork in order to know what to look for during the next period of participant observation. (pp. 33–34)

As such, a strict sequence of prescribed methods will not suffice. Ethnography achieves virtue and vitality through its lack of prescription, by continuously straddling the line between structured research design and improvised inquisitive adventure. Gary Alan Fine and James G. Deegan ( 1996 ) described ethnography as “a puzzle of mysterious design” that is “only known when the researcher has decided that it is close enough to completion” (p. 441). Through iterative processes of tacking back and forth between experiences and reflections, ethnographers piece together their research projects.

Ethnography then should be thought of as involving iterative–inductive–inscription practices . 18 It is iterative in the sense that it involves recurrently engaging with theory, data, and analysis (O’Dell & Willim, 2011 ); it is inductive in that ethnographers approach this engagement with open minds and few preconceptions about where data will lead them; and it is inscriptive in foregrounding writing as its principal mode of recording data, analyzing data, and representing social life (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005 ).

Ethnography and Empathy

The ethnographic project is variously empathetic. Through intersubjective engagements—most notably via participant observation—ethnographers aspire to “imaginatively experience the feelings, thoughts, and situation” (Davis, 2014 , p. 6) of people they work among. As such, ethnography encourages a degree of intimacy between researcher and researched that, at its best, recognizes and appreciates their mutual implication in the production of knowledge (Lassiter, 2005 ; Sluka & Robben, 2012 ). Ethnographers’ commitments to the people and communities they conduct research among are both moral and political. Academically situated ethnographers—on the basis of their training, disciplinary identities, and institutional affiliations—are mandated to protect the interests of the people and communities they work among by following institutional and disciplinary guidelines surrounding research, most notably those pertaining to informed consent, deception , and confidentiality . 19 In addition, trained and invested ethnographers recognize their charge to reveal, unsettle, and at times undermine the institutions and forces through which social inequalities are maintained and perpetuated. Thus, ethnographers are consistently attentive to the interests of disempowered groups. When working among such groups, these commitments to social justice result in alliances and recognitions of researched communities’ roles in evaluating the quality of ethnographies (Harrison, 2018 ). In contrast, when working among power-wielding groups—what Laura Nader ( 1972 ) called studying up —ethnographers should feel some obligation to use their position and access to uncover and even disrupt the workings of power. This can take many forms. However, its absence—for example, using conventional ethnographic methods for the explicit purpose of perpetuating social inequalities—in these enlightened times 20 is simply not ethnography.

This notion of ethnographic empathy also pertains to the reception of works ethnographers produce. Ethnographic authors write toward the of goal of enabling their readers to envision themselves walking in someone else’s shoes and, what is more, to grasp people’s perspectives and understand their behaviors as resulting from alternative (or previously unrecognized) cultural logics. Ethnographers’ written accounts communicate person-to-person sentiments—inviting readers to imagine the situated interests and actions of someone else. Resembling, to some degree, how a politician might use a handful of personal stories to communicate something about the state of a nation during a national address, 21 the most evocative ethnographic writings utilize sentimentality and emotion in detailing individual’s stories and particular episodes. As such, their representational power lies in their informational richness and ability to communicate affect , as opposed to other research traditions that prioritize statistical validity or theoretical applicability. Indeed, by providing compelling testimonies, which embrace the emotionality and messiness of real life (Law, 2004 ), ethnographies do more to complicate and therefore advance existing theories than to straightforwardly confirm them.

Ethnography and Narrative

Storytelling saturates ethnography. Ethnographers collect stories from people firsthand, on their own terms, or in such close proximity to them that they powerfully reflect something about the way culturally situated actors move through their worlds (Turner, 2007 ). As researchers, we invite such stories through open-ended ethnographic interviews (see the section Ethnographic Interviews) where participants are asked to share their personal histories, their perspectives, and/or what is most meaningful to them about a given topic. Ethnographers are also told personal narratives while building rapport and deeply hanging out (Wogan, 2004 )—for example, when getting a ride home from an open-microphone event (Harrison, 2009 , p. 64) or while sharing cramped living spaces (Holmes, 2013 ). In addition, ethnographers are regularly featured actors in the stories they recount. Contemporary ethnography mandates degrees of reflexivity and transparency, both of which demand that researchers share aspects of their personal stories and provide some accounting of the research experiences that led them to know what they know. These stories—often culled from interview transcripts or field journals or pieced together from various sources (Brand, 2007 )—get recirculated, re-created, or re-placed, sometimes verbatim, in ethnographic texts.

Ethnographers are foremost writers. A primary aspect of their data collection involves writing field notes (see the section Field-Note Writing). In crafting these and other data into finished works, they indulge ethnography’s aspirations and ability to reach broad audiences and to communicate sophisticated meanings through artful storytelling and other experimental modes of academic writing. As a thickly descriptive research genre, ethnographic texts may, at times, appear to threaten too much information; however, when done well, the layered meanings activated through such dense contextualization circle back to show their relevance. Accordingly, ethnographic writing should be undertaken as a writerly endeavor—meaning that authors acknowledge the intelligence of their readers and, therefore, allow space for them to construct their own meanings and make their own sense of certain aspects of an ethnographic account. 22

The Story of the College Visit

A few years after completing my dissertation, I was invited to speak to an anthropology class at a small liberal arts college where I was giving a guest lecture. The students had read a short piece—recounting the story of a gathering in Golden Gate Park following an open-microphone event—that would become the introduction to my first book, Hip Hop Underground (Harrison, 2009 ). 23 I spent a few minutes talking about my research in relation to the passage and then opened the floor for questions. A few questions in, a young man raised his hand and began explaining how he had grown up in San Francisco, had probably “partied” on the same Golden Gate Park picnic tables that I mentioned in my piece, and was someone who considered hip-hop close to his heart. At this point, he looked away, focusing on the paper on his desk and, in thoughtful, measured tones explained that whenever he read an academic piece on hip-hop he found himself getting defensive. Mine was the first piece he had read where he did not have that feeling. “That’s ethnography,” I said.

Paradigmatic Plasticity

Throughout the course of their research and writing, ethnographers orient themselves around certain theoretical, ethical, and political commitments. At their foundation, these commitments involve questions of ontology (concerning the nature of reality), epistemology (how we know what we know), and axiology (relating to morals and values). Following Patricia Leavy ( 2009 ), I use paradigm as an umbrella term that encompasses the range of philosophical stances, assumptions, and goals that surround research endeavors. Although the philosophies guiding ethnographic research are quite often unstated, at moments when they come into conflict the results can be explosive.

The Story of the Conference Incident

Several years ago, I attended an interdisciplinary conference where, in response to a few last-minute cancelations, the organizers decided to combine two panels. This made sense at the time. First, although the panel topics were different, they overlapped under the broader theme of the conference. Second, a single panel would attract a larger audience for all of the presentations—indeed, by the time I arrived it was standing room only. Last, such a move would spare one presenter from the awkwardness of being the lone panelist in a 90-minute session. However, in deciding to combine panels, the organizers overlooked or chose to ignore the paradigmatic differences informing the respective audiences that would be drawn to each panel. This did not become an issue until the final presentation: a masterful explication on the functionality of various strategies for alleviating conflict among competing social groups. During the question-and-answer period, an audience member—who had obviously come to see presentations initially slated for the other panel—questioned the researcher’s right to reduce people’s behaviors to such all-too-neat formulations, the evidentiary basis on which his claims were being made, as well as his investment in the communities through which, in making his academic career, he appeared to be profiting from. Chaos ensued as the two parties went back and forth in a heated exchange—with the accused researcher at one point even blurting out, “You don’t know me!” Thankfully, there were only a few minutes left in the session. As the panel came to a close, various colleagues approached the two combatants to endorse their action and/or console, as appropriate.

As a research tradition, ethnography straddles multiple paradigms. With its roots in anthropology—regarded as the most humanistic of social sciences and the most scientific of humanities (Redfield, 1953 )—such paradigmatic plasticity is to be expected. Yet, as ethnographic practices have migrated to a wide range of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary spaces, the potential for paradigmatic disputes over what is and what is not “good” and/or legitimate research has become more pronounced.

By my reckoning, both parties involved in the conference incident would rightly consider their work ethnographic. Yet where activities of research (i.e., methods) may appear similar, the foundational philosophies of knowledge (i.e., epistemologies) and ideas about how it should be applied through endeavors labeled “research” can look radically different.

In considering different paradigmatic orientations surrounding qualitative inquiry, Thomas Schwandt ( 2000 ) highlighted three areas of concern that are instructive for my discussion of ethnography. I adapt them here:

Cognitive concerns surrounding how to define, justify, and legitimize claims to understanding.

Social concerns regarding (in this case) the goals of ethnography.

Moral concerns as to how to “envision and occupy the ethical space” between ethnographers and those they research in responsible, obligatorily aware, and status conscious ways (see Schwandt, 2000 , p. 200).

Before briefly outlining some of the paradigms that surround ethnography, I offer a few caveats. Whereas defining and labeling paradigmatic frameworks is useful, it would be a mistake to give too much attention to trying to fit a particular researcher or even an instance of ethnographic research neatly into one category. Ethnographic experience is perpetually ephemeral, meaning that at times ethnographers are prone to move, transform, and shape shift between different paradigmatic classifications. Attempts to categorize also tend to highlight differences over time and disciplinary space. While differences clearly exist—the above-mentioned conference incident stands as a testament to this—the need to neatly place individuals or projects in particular boxes closes down the possibility of also seeing commonalities and furthermore belies the nuanced nature and theoretic eclecticism of ethnographic inquiry. Nonetheless, in what follows, I discuss three philosophical traditions that ethnographers might move between and draw from as paradigmatic resources.

Positivism is premised on a belief in what is referred to as naive realism —that is, the notion that there is a reality out there that can be grasped through sensory perception. As such, it holds empirical data—that which is produced though direct observations—as definitive evidence through which to construct claims to truth. In doing so, positivism prioritizes objectivity, assuming that it is possible for a researcher to detach him- or herself from values, interests, or the clouding contamination of bias and prejudice. Following this formula, good research is achieved through conventional rigor—that is, dutifully following a prescribed, systematic series of steps surrounding data accumulation and analysis. In that positivism recognizes a fundamental (capital “T”) Truth, which it is believed researchers can apprehend, researchers anchored in this tradition are more prone to concern themselves with questions of transferability (i.e., can the findings from one setting be applied to another?) and generalizability (i.e., can the findings from a particular context be generalized to the whole?) on the assumption that such Truth has potential relevance for a broad range of social circumstances and cultural contexts. Although few, if any, contemporary ethnographers would define themselves as strict positivists, it is nonetheless important to discuss positivism as foundational to any social scientific enterprise. To some extent, outlining the tenets of strict positivism may be useful in explaining what most ethnographers are not. However, before dismissing it too quickly, I should point out that, particularly with regard to the mandates of certain gatekeepers of credible research reporting, ethnography is not as far removed from its positivist principles as some of its practitioners would like to think. Postpositivist orientations 24 toward valuing empirical evidence, making efforts toward detached objectivism, and deductive reasoning continue to carry weight, even if researchers are less confident about their conclusions.

Interpretivism

Interpretivism, which issues from an acknowledgment of the constructed nature of all social reality, recognizes no single all-encompassing Truth, but rather multiple (small “t”) truths that are the products of human subjectivities. Thus, cultural and contextual specifics are critical to understanding, and inductive reasoning becomes the privileged path to making sense of unwieldy social realities. Reality, which is shaped by experience, thus becomes something to be interpreted. Such interpretivism sees human action as inherently meaningful with meanings being processual, temporal, and historically unfinished. The subjectivity of the ethnographer is quite consequential here. Under any form of interpretivism, the outcomes of researcher bias are acknowledged. Sometimes efforts are made to mitigate researchers’ subjectivities. Such techniques might involve reflexive journaling, inventorying subjectivities, and other attempts to manage and track bias (Schwandt, 2000 , p. 207n11). Yet, increasingly, interpretivist approaches accept that within ethnography the human is the research instrument and, as such, cultural, social, and personal frames of reference are inescapable.

Critical Research

The critical research paradigm focuses on the workings of power, with attention to axes including (but not limited to) race, gender, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and differential abilities. As opposed to the positivist stance of neutrality and detachment, critical researchers distinguish themselves by their personal and sometimes emotional investment in the welfare of the individuals and communities they work among. Critical researchers are committed to using their research to empower such communities by working with them to create meaningful social change. 25 As such, they aspire to make the processes surrounding research transparent to both the communities they work among and their various audiences. Critical perspectives emerged in connection with various social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and, accordingly, are often fashioned as a form of scholar activism. Recently, participant action and collaboration have become key methodological imperatives shaping the relationships formed around various critical research projects. Through such developments, questions regarding who initiates research, controls its direction, and owns its products have become vitally important.

Ethnographers do not just take part in the daily lives of the people they conduct research among; as a consequence of their participation, they impact people’s lives and, in turn, are implicated in them. It is therefore difficult to separate cognitive, social, and moral concerns surrounding research. All are influenced by the research paradigm(s) the ethnographer observes. Paradigmatic orientations affect the entire ethnographic process, starting with the ways research is conceived of and designed, what qualifies as data, and ultimately how such data are treated.

Through the previous discussion of paradigms and essential attributes, I have drawn attention to ethnography as a research methodology, as opposed to a method. Again, this distinction is important to my effort to differentiate ethnography from qualitative field research more generally. Nevertheless, when someone mentions doing ethnographic research, a handful of research activities (or methods) come to mind. These include having sustained contact with a community of people through participant observation, writing field notes, and (usually) interviewing. In the following sections, I give each of these research conventions additional consideration.

Participant Observation

Participant observation, as the term suggests, refers to a research disposition somewhere between full participation, just like (or as) a member of a community, and strictly observing. While participant observation is often conceptualized as a location on a continuum between these two extremes—with ideally some level of balance 26 —I believe it is better thought of as a simultaneous process that oscillates between varying degrees of participation and observation. Such oscillations occur both situationally and temporally. In the case of the latter, they might take place in the context of a particular event or more generally over the course of different research phases. Participant observation has historically been championed as providing the virtues of both an insider’s (participant) and an outsider’s (observer) perspective. As a foundation of ethnographic understanding, a discussion of this insider/outsider binary is instructive even if such neat distinctions rarely, if ever, exist in the lived world.

Whereas a recognized goal of ethnography is to grasp people’s understandings of their world, since its inception the primary means of achieving this goal has been through experiential understanding. Writing in his introduction to Argonauts , Malinowski (1922/1966, p. 5) recalled that, to “get … the hang of tribal life,”

I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired “the feeling” for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful field work. (p. 8)

Yet to simply grasp the native’s point of view is often not enough. Ethnographers have long recognized that “those cultural features of a particular society that are the most deeply ingrained are the least likely to be explicated and questioned by native members themselves” (Wengle, 1988 , p. xvii). As a consequence of ethnocentrism —that is, the tendency for all people to position their own cultural beliefs and practices at the center of their worldview (i.e., to see them as “normal”)—native members of a cultural group are at times blind to many of the most salient aspects of their lifeways. 27 Thus, a flexible and situated position somewhere between an insider and an outsider is typically upheld as ideal.

As a practice, participant observation involves an inherent critique of interviewing. Although interviewing is fundamental to most ethnographic projects, advocates of participant observation are quick to point out that, if the goal is to understand behaviors and worldviews in their cultural context, interviews alone will not suffice. There is usually some disjuncture between what people do and what they say they do. At one level, this can be seen as a distinction between ideal and actual behavior. In an interview setting, people are more likely to shade their representations of behaviors toward cultural ideals. For example, studies point out the tendency among Americans to underreport the amount of alcohol they consume (Rathje & Murphy, 1992 ). Whether consciously underreported or not, this pattern is likely connected to the cultural ideal against drinking too much. Yet even in circumstances where a strong cultural ideal is not in play, people’s behaviors amount to more than what they choose or are able to tell an interviewer in the context of an interview. Native language speakers, for example, would have considerable difficulty explaining the rules to their language or how they know what they know without additional linguistic training. Even in a situation where both conditions are met (someone is aware and can explain ), an interviewee must make decisions about what to emphasize and what to ignore or gloss over. Such choices might lead them to steer clear of topics that the interviewer would find salient. 28

To return to the drinking example, in particular settings where the ability to consume a lot of alcohol is linked to status, it may be likely that quantities will be overreported. Of course, such settings are usually informal, are semiexclusive, and involve peer groups—for example, the stereotypical morning after the college fraternity party. Another advantage of participant observation over interviewing alone is that it provides access to these interior spaces. Fieldworkers achieve this by locating such spaces, gaining access (including building rapport), and, notably, spending time there. The famous Hawthorne studies on worker productivity found that people tend to alter their behavior for short periods of time under the scrutiny of a researcher or observer (Landsberger, 1958 ). Such reactivity can jeopardize ethnography’s aspirations for naturalistic inquiry. Thus, an ideal, if nearly unattainable, goal of participant observation is that the researcher becomes familiar enough within the research setting that everyday life proceeds as if he or she was not there. Factors surrounding this include duration of time in a setting, resemblance between researcher and members of the researched community, and level of participation.

Duration of Time in the Setting

The general rule is that the longer a researcher stays in “the field,” the more accustomed people become to his or her presence—not to mention the greater the understanding of what is going on. Yet this is conditional. Wolcott ( 1987 ) pointed out that, “based on any one researcher’s skill, sensitivity, problem, and setting, optimum periods of fieldwork may vary” (p. 39). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that within anthropology the Malinowski-derived standard has been a minimum of 1 year in the field.

Resemblance between Researcher and Members of the Researched Community

This resemblance includes both physical and social resemblances. Greater resemblance, in theory, facilitates “life as usual,” whereas notable differences are a perpetual reminder that there is a researcher present. Some of the most recognizable differences concern race, language proficiency, decisions regarding self-presentation, and, in certain instances, age and gender.

Level of Participation

This, in part, depends on the researcher’s aspirations—for example, a researcher may aspire to a stance that, at different times, involves full participation or minimum participation (Junker, 1960 ). At the same time, and in conjunction with the previously noted factors, the various communities researchers engage have differing levels of accessibility and inclinations toward hospitality (e.g., insisting that someone “join in”); and beyond language alone, researchers have different competencies 29 —all of which can impact their level of participation.

In sum, participant observation is simultaneously the most fundamental, complex, and uncertain method of ethnographic research. Its temporal parameters can range from strictly designated fieldwork outings—for example, a few hours in the field on a weekday afternoon—to an all-consuming living experience (24 hours a day) spanning several years. Its spatial parameters can be as narrow as a Midwest college bar (Spradley & Mann, 1975 ), as broad as multiple sites across a global landscape (Wulff, 1998 ), and as amorphous as translocal (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997 ) and virtual (Nardi, 2010 ) fields of activity. 30 While a good deal of planning goes into participant observation research projects, the combination of its ill-defined parameters and the fact that it plays out in the lived world render it difficult to forecast and, consequently, a largely improvised endeavor.

Field-Note Writing

A second principal method of ethnographic research is the creation and management of ethnographic field notes. These systematic in-the-field writings are inextricably linked to participant observation in that they serve as the primary means of recording the detailed observations and insights gleaned through such experiences. Accordingly, the quality and character of field-note writing have implications on an ethnographer’s ability to accurately and effectively report research findings. 31 Historically, field notes received little methodological attention. Like ethnography more generally, their resemblance to people’s everyday activities—particularly the act of keeping a personal journal or diary—cultivated the belief that instructions to simply “write down everything you see and hear” would suffice. In the literature that has since emerged on field-note writing, there is no consensus on a single correct method. I would advise any researcher to use the available methodological prescripts as guidelines but to develop particular routines and procedures that align with their own best writing habits as well as the specific circumstances of research. Nevertheless, a handful of best practices consistently show up in the literature and together illustrate why field-note writing and keeping a diary are not one and the same.

Schedule a significant amount of time each day or soon after each fieldwork “outing” to write field notes. Details fade with the passage of time, so do not unnecessarily delay field-note writing. In a full-immersion fieldwork situation—where participant observation comprises the entirety of one’s living experience—this practice of writing field notes (i.e., articulating and reflecting on observations and experiences) can be thought of as the major nonparticipatory endeavor that the researcher consistently engages in.

Employ jottings or “scratch notes” (Sanjek, 1990 , p. 96)—that is, quickly scribbled words or phrases, written in the context of participant observing, intended to jog one’s memory when writing. A researcher should always carry a small notebook or some equivalent jot-recording technology (e.g., a small handheld recorder). Additionally, when observing/experiencing the world with the intention of documenting it through field-note writing, it is important to rely on all one’s senses and not merely vision alone. Sounds, smells, tastes, and touches can all be powerful means to creating scenes on a page.

Organize different approaches to field-note writing categorically. For example, Emerson et al. (2011, pp. 57–79) discussed four general field-note subcategories: (a) descriptions based on concrete sensory details of physical spaces, people, objects, or actions, (b) dialogues between people, (c) characterizations portraying how a person acts and lives, and (d) narratives involving either sketches (i.e., snapshots) of a setting/character or episodes illustrated through continuous action and interaction. In all of these categories, it is important for the field-note writer to distinguish between that which is concrete and/or directly observed—for example, verbatim quotes—and that which is inferred, approximated, or logically assumed (Bailey, 2017 ). Field notes can additionally take the form of methodological notes (highlighting research techniques used and/or planned), analytic notes (periodic forays into conceptual understandings that strive to approximate professional writing 32 ), and personal notes (therapeutic and potentially revealing outlets for discussing one’s relationships, feelings, and emotions).

Ethnographic Interviews

Ethnographers typically conduct interviews as a primary method of research. However, whereas participant observation is so central to ethnography that some well-practiced scholars might be forgiven for simply—and in my view, mistakenly—equating the two, interview-based research and ethnography are distinctly different (Becker & Geer, 1957 ; Lamont & Swidler, 2014 ). Ethnographers, like most qualitative researchers, conduct interviews, but, unlike participant observation, interviews alone do not come close to approximating ethnography.

Ethnographic interviewing is distinct from what I will call general interview-based research in several ways. First, ethnographic interviews typically take place after a researcher has been in the field for some period of time. Ethnographers do not enter the field assuming they know what is most important; firsthand experience in a social arena is thought to facilitate better interview questions (O’Reilly, 2012 ). It is furthermore presumed that a level of familiarity between researcher and researched, and perhaps even mutual respect, leads to better research collaborations.

Second, ethnographers understand and at times analyze interviews as speech events—meaning that an interview is more than just a transcript of questions and answers. Contextual factors including (but not limited to) place, time, body language, fluidity of dialogue, and prior relationship between interviewer and interviewee may all have a bearing on the way an interview plays out (O’Reilly, 2012 ). In fact, an ethnographer may find as much value in what a person chooses not to talk about as in what they emphasize. Additionally, the texture of statements—such things as inflection, accent, volume, and cadence—combined with context, can often alter the literal meaning of what is said.

Finally, some ethnographers consider everyday dialogue with people in the field as a form of informal interviewing. If an interview is defined as a consciously initiated verbal exchange through which a researcher—primarily via questions and answers—learns from the people they conduct research among about a given topic, we must be cognizant of the fact that, during the course of participant observation–based fieldwork, these types of exchanges take place all the time. At what point does asking someone how to take the bus downtown or inquiring, over coffee, about why someone did not join his or her sister in visiting a relative turn into an interview? The point is, with participant observation research, these distinctions are conditional and often undefined.

Participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing are by no means the only research methods ethnographers employ. The data collection techniques of ethnographic research are often determined pragmatically in relation to theoretical orientations, research questions, and the availability and appropriateness of various options. Ethnographers also gather and analyze pieces of material culture, make nonparticipatory behavioral observations; record videos; take photographs; engage in community mapping; conduct surveys, genealogies, and domain analyses; and examine archival documents, censuses, and various media materials, in addition to a range of other methods. Nevertheless, participant observations, the field notes they inspire, and interviewing comprise the core practices of most ethnographic researchers.

Ethnographic Comportment

As a final framework for understanding ethnography and what distinguishes it from other forms of participant observation–based field research, I introduce the idea of ethnographic comportment as a politics of positionality, which bears on an ethnographer’s conduct and demeanor throughout the research and writing process. The critical awarenesses that underly ethnographic comportment, in many respects, are extensions of ethnography’s now-standard mandate for reflexivity. Generally speaking, reflexivity in ethnography amounts to an awareness of “one’s own role in the construction of social life as [ethnographic research] unfolds” (O’Reilly, 2012 , p. 11). It involves “a continual internal dialogue and critical self-evaluation” regarding one’s positionality, assumptions, and agendas (Berger, 2015 , p. 220). The origins of reflexivity can be traced to ethnographers’ postwar rise in self-consciousness (Nash & Wintrob, 1972 ), which was fully realized with anthropology’s 1980s postmodern turn (Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Marcus & Fischer, 1986 ). In the early 21st century, reflexivity is thought of as both an important aspect of ethnographic knowledge production and a means to assessing research accountability and validity. Trained ethnogra phers are well aware of this—to the point, perhaps, where reflexivity becomes embodied knowledge or a part of who we are.

Ethnographic training also includes familiarity with ethnography’s history and key debates (McGranahan, 2014 ). This history began during the colonial era at a time when, according to Kathleen Gough ( 1968 ), “Western nations were making their final push to bring practically the whole pre-industrial non-Western world under their political and economic control” (p. 401). Anthropologists, particularly, are well schooled in this history and, as a foundation of contemporary disciplinary training, debate the extent to which past ethnographers were willingly and/or unwillingly complicit in furthering it (see Lewis, 2013 ). Ethnographers working in sociology observe a similar tradition of researching marginalized urban communities (Vidich & Lyman, 2000 ) and representing them in ways, or through analytical categories, that were often not consistent with their self-understandings and/or best interests.

Training in ethnography should also incorporate considerations of the power dynamics that continue to shape ethnographic encounters (Koivunen, 2010 ; Wolfe, 1996 ). These critical awarenesses inspire sensibilities that ethnographers carry with them throughout the research enterprise. I am in no position to prescribe the exact decisions and actions that follow from such awarenesses. Does the White British ethnographer researching in Ghana meaningfully grapple with the politics surrounding the favorable attention she receives as a European in Africa, or does she simply explain that Ghanaians are nice and she had no trouble building rapport? Does she struggle with the historical implications of potentially projecting her own frames of understanding onto contemporary Abron music practices or does she simply report what she understands she is seeing and move on? The choice is up to the ethnographer; however, it should be made with some understanding of and critical reflection on the enterprise she is taking part in. To summarize, ethnographic comportment involves a historical awareness and reflexive self-awareness of one’s participation in ethnography as a research tradition. Following João de Pina-Cabral’s ( 1992 ) assertion that ethnographers match what they observe “against the accumulated knowledge of [their] discipline” (p. 6), I maintain that such knowledge increasingly includes a critical outlook on both the historical and the resonating fault lines of ethnography as practiced.

At a moment when the (mis)use of ethnography as an umbrella term for any and all qualitative research threatens its integrity, researchers who are seriously invested in ethnography are reflexive of their participation in this research tradition. Accordingly, they adopt a disposition of accountability for their role in advancing rejuvenated and/or progressive forms of ethnographic practice. Throughout the process of research, ethnographers are (self-)conscious about how they comport themselves in relation to their research and the people they are researching among; they are also conscious—albeit often abstractly—of the end product that they are working toward. Such textual awareness (Van Maanen, 2011 ) influences their decision-making throughout the various, flexible, and often unforeseeable stages of an ethnographic project. When their work is finished, they hope that both their in-the-field conduct and their written ethnography will be regarded as good (see Harrison, 2018 ) and, in the best of instances, that the latter will contribute to furthering the ethnographic tradition in positive ways.

In sum, ethnographic comportment is predicated on the idea that the embodied knowledge a researcher has accrued through disciplinary and methodological training guides them, as a form of improvised analysis, throughout the ethnographic enterprise toward the goal of producing work that is valued in its own right, (usually) by the researched community, and as part of the ethnographic tradition.

At a time when the proliferation of ethnography threatens to untether it from its core commitments and fundamental modes of inquiry, I see a pressing need to reprofessionalize ethnography by calling attention to its historical foundations, outlining its central practices and research principles, and presenting new frameworks, which I believe are helpful in grasping and gauging its contemporary significance. An awareness of ethnography’s history—its complicated engagements with colonialism and progressive humanism—should inform all efforts to move it forward. Beyond key practices like participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing, ethnography is marked by its attention to culture as an explanatory construct, lavish contextualization, iterative modes of data collection and analysis, empathetic engagements, and abundant storytelling. In embracing these attributes, ethnographers thoughtfully observe, reflect on, and represent the complexities of social life and culturally situated perspectives of people.

Ethnographers are not particularly adept at problem solving, in large part because the knowledge they procure, produce, and distribute is expansive, conditional, and historically unfinished. While “bucolic wise men” gather at the village store and resolve gun control debates or immigration issues in minutes, the ethnographer among them is perpetually suspicious of such quick answers. She understands that her job is to listen for meaning. She may participate—to extend the dialogue or maintain her own internal dialogue as she reflects on the grounded perspectives being shared around her. Above all else, she recognizes that people on all sides of a debate have convictions, passions, and frameworks of understanding that should be respected and that, as researchers, we should aspire to better understand. Increasingly, such patience and attention to human complexities are under threat by assembly line modes of academic production that treat time and knowledge as commodities. Yet by resisting these inclinations—and offering a counter to narrow definitions of research efficiency—ethnography secures its relevance to understanding the varied ways people live their lives and means through which they know what they know.

Future Directions

How can ethnography continue to flourish within contexts of accelerating academic production? How can it maintain its patient, thoughtful, and unfinished research practices at a time when academic value is equated with efficiency, volume of output, and tangibility of results?

Given that many people in the early 21st century engage with digital/social media technologies as aspects of their daily lives, how can ethnography best attend to the intersections between virtual and physical worlds?

In contexts of increased political and methodological conservatism, where institutional review boards require completed research designs and protocols as prerequisites to approval, how can ethnographers represent their iterative and inductive modes of research in ways that comply with institutionally mandated expectations?

As the lines between ethnography and everyday life become increasingly fuzzy, what new modes of ethnographic understanding and representation should be acknowledged and embraced?

In ethnography’s postpostmodern reformulations and trajectories, how should researchers map the borders of the field (ontologically and in terms of the various interests that ethnographic studies can serve)?

Ethnography’s foundations are in writing culture, yet, historically, ethnographers are deeply implicated in the project of literatizing nonliterate societies. Given this paradox, what nonliteral forms of ethnographic representations might a contemporary, critical, and historically informed ethnographic project take? How can we move beyond writing culture ?

Here, I am using field in both the traditional sense of fieldwork conducted within a physical place/space and in the Bourdieuian sense of a field of cultural practice (Bourdieu, 1984 ).

Ethnographies can also take the shorter form of essays and professional journal articles, as well as nonliterary forms like “films, records, museum displays, or whatever” (Geertz, 1973 , p. 19n). Recognizing this—yet in the interest of avoiding cumbersome qualifications—throughout the remainder of the chapter I treat ethnography foremost as a writing practice.

Etymologically, ethnography combines ethno , meaning “culture (or race),” and graphy, meaning “to write, record, and describe.” Thus, ethnography can be thought of as the process and product of writing, recording, and describing culture.

In addition to my own writings, there is a wealth of very good work on ethnography’s history—for example, see Darnell ( 2001 ), Jones ( 2010 ), Kuper ( 1996 ), Lassiter ( 2005 ), and Stocking ( 1983a ).

Broadly speaking, the distinction between social and cultural anthropology is based on national traditions, with the former practiced in England and the latter in the United States. More specifically, British (social) anthropology has historically stressed the interrelationships between social institutions and observes foundational figures like Malinowski and Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, whereas American (cultural) anthropology recognizes cultural coherences as outlined through the work of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict (Garbarino, 1977/1983 ).

In the introduction to Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Malinowski ( 1922/1966 ) included a footnote explaining that, “according to a useful habit of the terminology of science, [he] uses the word Ethnography for the empirical and descriptive results of the science of Man, and the word Ethnology for speculative and comparative theories” (p. 9, fn).

Historically, the masculine pronouns he/him/his were used as universal references to all people—in this case falsely implying that all ethnographers were men. Rather than cluttering the text with numerous [ sic ]s, I let these pass without further comment. In instances where I offer gendered pronouns, as a general (but not exclusive) rule, I use the feminine she/her/hers. Following Margery Wolf ( 1992 ), I do not do this “to privilege the female voice but to call attention to the way in which the supposedly generic ‘he’ does in fact privilege the male voice” (p. 56).

Malinowski was certainly not the first to acknowledge the importance of “native subjectivity”—in fact, several commentators have highlighted this as an area where American anthropologists greatly outpaced their British counterparts (Bunzl, 2004 ; Darnell, 2001 ; Lassiter & Campbell, 2010 ). Indeed, cultural relativism as an anthropological movement is most prominently connected with Franz Boas and his students, Margaret Mead ( 1928/1961 ), Melville Herskovits ( 1972 ), and, most famously, Ruth Benedict ( 1934/2005 ). Yet the significance of Malinowski’s powerful dictate to understand native subjectivities—as a “goal, of which an ethnographer should never lose sight” (1922/1966, p. 25)—is illustrated by the frequency with which he has been and continues to be cited.

A short list of Malinowski’s students at the London School of Economics includes Raymond Firth, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Hortense Powdermaker, Edmund Leach, Jomo Kenyatta, Lucy Mair, Audrey Richards, and Meyer Fortes.

Howard Becker ( 1999 ) is critical of this designation, arguing that “ ‘Chicago’ was never the unified chapel … [nor] unified school of thought” that many believe it to have been (p. 10).

These include Nel’s Anderson’s The Hobo (1923/1961), Frederick Thrasher’s The Gang ( 1927 ), Louis Wirth’s The Ghetto ( 1928 ), Harvey W. Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929), Paul Cressey’s The Taxi-Dance Hall ( 1932 ), and E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Family in Chicago ( 1932 ).

For example, until 1929, the department at Chicago was known as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Among the (other) notable anthropologists in the department during these formative years were Boas’s students, Edward Sapir and Fay-Cooper Cole; Robert Redfield, who married Park’s daughter; and Ralph Linton, who taught classes there while affiliated with Chicago’s Field Museum (Faris, 1967 ).

Commenting on the improvisational nature of anthropological ethnography, Lisa H. Malkki ( 2007 ) suggested that sociologists approach ethnography “with a different sensibility” (p. 186, n2). Additionally, there appears to be some historical reluctance within the sociological tradition to refer to their brand of field research as ethnography. In Buford H. Junker’s ( 1960 ) seminal introduction to social science fieldwork, for example, based on extensive interviews with University of Chicago student fieldworkers, ethnography is only referenced on a few occasions. In one telling passage, Junker describes the ethnographer’s task of “start[ing] from scratch by learning the language of his esoteric people” in opposition to the sociological field worker operating “in some part of an otherwise already familiar cultural milieu” (1960, p. 70).

Malinowski ( 1922/1966 ) specifically said that “one of the first conditions of acceptable ethnographic work certainly is that it should deal with the totality of all social, cultural, and psychological aspects of a community, for they are so interwoven that not one can be understood without taking into consideration all the others” (p. xvi). This idea of anthropology as a holistic science—assuming the interconnections and mutual influences between various aspects of social life—continues to be reiterated in the introductory chapters of almost all discipline textbooks.

Several very good overviews of the qualitative research methods used in ethnography exist, including Bailey ( 2017 ), Bernard ( 1995 ), Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw ( 2011 ), Gobo ( 2008 ), Hammersley and Atkinson ( 1995 ), Pawluch, Shaffir, and Miall ( 2005 ), and Spradley ( 1980 ).

Whereas historically ethnographers thought of their work as focusing on neatly bounded cultures, usually (mis)represented as being isolated from globalizing influences, 21st century ethnographers understand their work to be focused on culture as a socially orienting concept—accordingly, the term shifts from being a noun to an adjective (e.g., cultural beliefs, cultural values, cultural processes).

This is not to suggest, as others have (see Marcus & Fischer, 1986 , p. 156), that “native” ethnographers lose their capacity for radical critique as a result of their Western anthropological training (McClaurin, 2001 ).

In making this characterization, I am building on Karen O’Reilly’s ( 2012 ) description of ethnography as an iterative–inductive process .

See Christians ( 2000 ) for a thorough discussion of these three guiding pillars surrounding qualitative research ethics.

I insert this qualification to recognize an earlier (less enlightened) period when some would argue that ethnography was used as an instrument of colonial domination (see Asad, 1973 ; Deloria, 1969 ; Gough, 1968 ).

I make this comparison based on behavior, not presumed intent. I am well aware that many people view politicians as being disingenuous. I am in no way implying that ethnographers operate with insincere intentions. Thank you to Steve Gerus for bringing this similarity to my attention.

I juxtapose this understanding of writerly against the example of an instruction manual, which as a very unwriterly text does not recognize its readers’ capacity to think on their own and therefore presents information in unimaginative ways with the intention of providing little room for alternative interpretations.

This can be found in Harrison, 2009 , pp. 1–6.

For a short summary of postpositivism, see Bailey ( 2017 ).

In particular cases, where such researchers work among more powerful groups, these commitments might be toward exposing the workings of power, thus leading toward the same ends of empowering those who are marginalized.

These in-between spaces are sometimes distinguished as observing participation and participating observation (see Bernard, 1995 ; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995 ; Junker, 1960 ).

This is sometimes referred to as homeblindness , defined as being blind to crucial dimensions of one’s own lifeways because they are taken for granted (Czarniawska, 1997 ). While I acknowledge that ethnocentrism more typically involves putting one’s culture above others, I maintain that homeblindness is a product of ethnocentrism.

Additionally, there might be countless potential reasons for an interviewee to be less than forthcoming.

For instance, someone doing an ethnography of pickup basketball games may have easier access if he or she has a background in playing basketball.

Today, many people engage the virtual, online, social media, or networked worlds consistently throughout their daily lives. To the extent that ethnographers are interested in engaging with people in everyday settings and circumstances, it would seem reasonable and even potentially quite illuminating for ethnographers to be attentive to the intersections of online and offline activities (Lane, 2016 ).

There are several excellent books that discuss field-note writing; see, for example, H. Russell Bernard’s Research Methods in Anthropology (1995); Carol A. Bailey’s A Guide to Qualitative Field Research ( 2017 ); and Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw’s Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes ( 2011 ). I strongly recommend that any novice researcher carry one of these books when embarking on fieldwork.

My definition of analytic notes is consistent with what Emerson et al. ( 2011 ) called in-process memos .

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The Ultimate Guide to Qualitative Research - Part 1: The Basics

Introduction and overview
What is qualitative research?
What is qualitative data?
Examples of qualitative data
Qualitative vs. quantitative research
Mixed methods
Qualitative research preparation
Theoretical perspective
Theoretical framework
Literature reviews
Research question
Conceptual framework
Conceptual vs. theoretical framework
Data collection
Qualitative research methods
Focus groups
Observational research
Case studies
Introduction

Defining ethnographic research

What are the methods in ethnographic research, how do i conduct an ethnography.

Ethical considerations
Confidentiality and privacy
Power dynamics
Reflexivity

What is ethnographic research?

An ethnographic study is one of the most ambitious endeavors a researcher can pursue in qualitative research . It involves using several ethnographic methods to observe and describe social life, social relations, or human society as a whole. Time-consuming and arduous as the data collection and data analysis might be, conducting an ethnography can be one of the most rewarding challenges in cultural anthropology, social anthropology, and similar qualitative research areas.

Let's look at the fundamentals of ethnographic research, examples of ethnographic studies, and the fundamentals of ethnography as a qualitative research method.

"Culture" is an ambiguous term that resists an easy definition. What defines a culture? What takes place inside a culture? What cultures does a particular individual belong to? Who decides who belongs to any specific culture?

Even within a particular context, there are several layers of cultures. Take the United States, for example. Given how diverse and as big as it is, how can one define American culture in as brief an explanation as possible? What are the different social groups within this one country, and how do those groups interact with each other?

Quantitative research is often incapable of capturing such detail, especially because it is extremely difficult to adequately capture a culture in quantitative terms. As a result, researchers often conduct traditional ethnographic research when they want to understand a culture. A credible, written account of a social group is challenging to produce. It requires looking at participant experiences, interviews , focus groups , and document collection, which are different ways to collect data for ethnographic research.

Ethnography belongs squarely in the realm of observational research . In other words, writing culture and cultural critique cannot be based on experiments performed in controlled settings. Ethnography aims to provide an immersive experience in a culture for audiences who are unfamiliar with it. In that case, the researcher must observe the intricate dimensions of social interaction in its natural environment. In ethnographic research, this observation is active and involves being part of the culture to understand the dimensions of cultural norms from the inside.

That said, even observation alone cannot capture concepts such as social relationships or cultural practices. Researchers conducting ethnographic studies acknowledge that simply observing and describing actions are insufficient to grasp social interaction fully. The concept of thick description, or the description of perspectives and beliefs informing those actions in addition to the actions themselves, guides the use of various methods to capture social phenomena from multiple angles.

What is the purpose of ethnographic research?

Ethnographic studies are heavily used in social and cultural anthropology disciplines to generate and expand theory. Outside of anthropology, the insights uncovered by ethnography help to propose or develop theories that can be verified by further qualitative or quantitative research within the social and human sciences.

In simple terms, ethnographic studies relate what a culture is to audiences who are otherwise unfamiliar outsiders. Armed with this understanding, researchers can illustrate and persuade audiences about patterns that emerge from a community or group of people. These patterns are essential to generating theory and pioneering work.

What are examples of ethnographic research?

Ethnographic research aims to reach a deep understanding of various socially-constructed topics, including:

Rituals and other cultural practices in everyday life
Social interaction among people of different cultures
People's interactions with their natural environment
Creation of and tensions in social relationships

Ethnography as a qualitative method is common in social and cultural anthropology and any scholarly discipline concerned with social interaction. The traditional role of ethnography is to inform scholars interested in cultures they wouldn't otherwise have contact or experience with. Various topics that have been explored by such research with ethnography include:

health care workers interacting with patients
teachers and students constructing classroom dialogue
workplace relations between employees and managers
experiences of refugees in conflict zones

Other disciplines, especially in the social sciences, employ ethnographic research methods for varied reasons, including understanding:

effective teaching practices
socialization processes
intercultural cohesiveness
company-customer relations

The range of inquiries that ethnography can answer is vast, highlighting the importance of ethnographic methods in studies where the researcher seeks a deep understanding of a particular topic.

Even within anthropology, there is a lack of consensus on the particular processes for conducting research through ethnography. Interaction among people is unpredictable to the extent that the researcher might encounter unexpected issues with research participants not foreseen at the outset of a study. Because no observational research can be conducted in a fully controlled setting, it is a challenge to define an exact process for an ethnography beyond the general principles guiding an ethnographic approach.

In broad terms, ethnographic data collection methods are varied. Still, all such methods carry the assumption that a single research method cannot fully capture a thorough understanding of a cultural phenomenon. A systematic study that employs ethnographic research methods collects data from observations, participant observations, and interviews . The researchers' reflections also contribute to the body of data since personal experiences are essential to understanding the unfolding ethnography.

Participant observation

At the core of field research is a method called participant observation . Scholars in contemporary ethnography have long acknowledged the importance of active participation in understanding cultural life. This method allows the researcher to experience activities and interactions alongside participants to establish an understanding they wouldn't otherwise achieve by observing from afar. In active participant observation, the ethnographic researcher takes field notes of what they see and experience. They are essential during fieldwork as they create a record that the researcher can look at later on to structure their analysis and recall crucial developments useful to data analysis .

During participant observation, the researcher may also collect other forms of data, including photographs and audio and video recordings . Sensory data is beneficial to ethnography because it helps the researcher recall essential experiences with vivid detail and provides potentially abundant supporting evidence for the arguments in their findings.

Interviews and focus groups

Participant observation provides data for seeing what people say and do in their natural environment. However, observation has its limits for capturing what people think and believe. As a result, an ethnographic researcher conducts interviews to follow up on what they saw in fieldwork with research participants.

A common type of interview in an ethnography is the stimulated recall interview. In a stimulated recall interview, research participants are asked questions about the events the researcher observed. These questions help research participants remember past experiences while providing the researcher with their way of thinking about those experiences.

A focus group involves interactions between the researcher and multiple research participants. Suppose the researcher is interested in the interpersonal dynamics between research participants. In that case, they might consider conducting focus groups to elicit interactions that are markedly different from one-on-one exchanges between a single research participant and the researcher. Interviews and focus groups also help uncover insights otherwise unfamiliar to the researcher, who can then use those insights to guide their theoretical understanding and further data collection .

Document collection

Documents often make up an essential aspect of cultural practices. Think about these examples:

student homework
medical records
newspaper articles
informational posters

The visual elements uncovered during an ethnography are potentially valuable to theoretical insights, and a researcher might find it important to incorporate documents in their project data.

Reflections

In any ethnography, the researcher is the main instrument of data collection. Their thoughts and beliefs are consequential to the data analysis in that any theoretical insights are filtered by their interpretations . As a result, a researcher should take field notes during participant observation and reflection notes about any connections between what they saw and what it might mean for generating theory during data analysis.

As with taking field notes, a researcher might not remember all the different things that transpire during an ethnography without being able to refer to some sort of record later on. More importantly, reflecting on theory during participant observation may be challenging. A useful practice involves sitting down after observations or interviews and writing down potential theoretical insights that come to mind.

Reflections guide participant observations during an ethnography and theoretical analysis afterward. They point the researcher toward phenomena that are most relevant to theory and guide discussion of that theory when the time comes to write a description of their ethnographic study.

Organizing data

With a research approach as complex as ethnography, you will likely collect abundant data that require organization to make the analytical process more efficient. Researchers can use ATLAS.ti to store all their data in a single project. Document groups allow you to categorize data into different types (e.g., text, audio, video), different contexts (e.g., hospital room, doctor's office), or even different dates (e.g., February 17th observation, March 21st observation).

Moreover, researchers can integrate text with multimedia in ATLAS.ti, which is ideal for analyzing interviews, because you can look at transcripts and their video or audio recordings simultaneously. This is a valuable feature in ethnographic studies examining how people speak and what they say. Photos and other visual documents can also easily be incorporated and analyzed, adding further valuable dimensions to your research.

Choose ATLAS.ti for analysis of all forms of data.

Download a free trial of ATLAS.ti to put your project data to work.

Now that we have established a foundational understanding of the various methods associated with ethnography, let's look at what an ethnographic approach to research might look like.

Defining your research questions

As with any research study, ethnographic studies begin when researchers want to know more about something unfamiliar. Do you want to understand how a particular group of people interact with their natural environment? What about how group members decide on a social structure? How is daily life affected by changing economic conditions over a long period of time?

Ethnographic research may also be appropriate for conducting a comparative study of multiple cultures. For example, consider the different groups of soccer fans in several parts of the world: fans in South America might act differently from fans in Europe or Asia. Teaching and learning in high school are bound to look different than teaching and learning in university settings. Emergency room medicine and hospice care have distinct purposes that affect the nature of interactions between doctors and patients.

Whatever the inquiry, the researcher benefits from defining a focus for their ethnography. A clear research question can help the researcher narrow their field of perception during participant observation . Suppose the research question has to do with doctor-patient interactions. In that case, the ethnographer can lend more focus to those conversations and less emphasis on ancillary developments within their research context. With a more specific view, they can examine how doctors speak to their patients while being less concerned about the hospital executives in earshot or the orderlies passing by unless and until they are relevant to the research inquiry.

Choosing theoretical perspectives

To further narrow the focus of the ethnography, a theoretical lens can direct the ethnographer toward aspects relevant to theory. Continuing with the example regarding doctor-patient interactions, let's imagine that the ethnographic study explores the role of reassuring language in situations regarding dire medical conditions. Are there relevant theories about what people can say to give peace of mind to others?

Typically, theories in qualitative research consist of a framework with discrete indicators you can use to organize knowledge. For example, let's suppose that there exists a concept of reassurance that can be broken down like this:

empathy - understanding and affirming other people's emotions evidence - providing examples of favorable results in similar situations responsiveness - actively listening to and validating others' concerns

With this sort of theory in mind, an ethnography can focus on listening for instances of these particular indicators during participant observation and recording these examples in field notes . Naturally, a theory is more credible if it's grounded in previous research.

Entering ethnographic fieldwork

The next step is to choose an appropriate and accessible context for your ethnography. Ethics are an important part of contemporary research in the social sciences, requiring permission from potential participants to observe and interact with them for research purposes.

Before any meaningful data collection, make sure to obtain informed consent from the research participants you are studying. Essentially, this involves receiving permission from your participants to document what they say and do after explaining the purpose of your study and the rights they have while participating in your ethnography.

Ethnographic collection of data

With a context and theory in mind, it's now time to conduct your ethnography. In general terms, this means entering the field and capturing as much rich data relevant to your research question as possible.

Good ethnographic practice relies on pursuing multiple research methods to capture data. Participant observation can help you document what people say and do, but good ethnographies also capture what people believe about their everyday actions.

However, the research method most associated with ethnographic research is note-taking. Field notes capture the researcher's personal experience with the culture they observe, which is necessary to fully understand the captured data. With the ethnographer as the main instrument of data collection, readers of ethnographic studies can attain a sense of the possible ways they can view cultures through the researcher's eyes.

Moreover, ethnography relies on rapport with research participants. Ethnographers who want to conduct interviews later will benefit from establishing good relationships with their research participants. As a result, more involved interactions during fieldwork can generate deeper and richer data for your study.

Considerations during fieldwork

It's important to remember that the ethnographer's presence can affect how people behave. Especially in participant observation, your interactions with research participants will directly influence what they do in their daily lives. Even our natural environment is affected by what we do in it. When writing your reflections, qualifying your interactions in the field with a sufficient accounting of how your presence might change what others say and do is important.

There are also ethical questions about what to document and how to use the resulting data afterward. Within anthropology, there are issues of representing cultural groups with respect and ensuring you have their permission to use what you observe and collect from the field. Top scholarly journals and academic conferences also want to know how you observed research ethics during fieldwork, so it is necessary to use your reflection memos to document your ethics practices in addition to the data you collect.

Further development in ethnographic fieldwork

Unexpected issues in field research, especially long-term fieldwork, can help you refine your theoretical framework . Returning to the example of the concept of reassurance, you might observe a doctor's explanation of a medical procedure and find that it's similar to providing evidence. Still, it does not fully align with the established theory. In other words, studying real-world episodes of medical explanations may contribute novel insights about reassurance, helping you further develop your focus in subsequent observations.

As you continue your ethnography, refining the scope of your theoretical perspective helps you more easily gather observational data relevant to your research inquiry and thus provide a fully developed framework for your data.

Research is a challenge. We help you make sense of it.

ATLAS.ti is the ultimate tool for all your data analysis needs. Download a free trial today.

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Ethnographic research as an evolving method for supporting healthcare improvement skills: a scoping review

Georgia b. black.

Department of Applied Health Research, UCL, London, UK

Sandra van Os

Samantha machen, naomi j. fulop, associated data.

All papers included in the review are listed in Additional file 4 and are publicly available from their publishers’ websites.

The relationship between ethnography and healthcare improvement has been the subject of methodological concern. We conducted a scoping review of ethnographic literature on healthcare improvement topics, with two aims: (1) to describe current ethnographic methods and practices in healthcare improvement research and (2) to consider how these may affect habit and skill formation in the service of healthcare improvement.

We used a scoping review methodology drawing on Arksey and O’Malley’s methods and more recent guidance. We systematically searched electronic databases including Medline, PsychINFO, EMBASE and CINAHL for papers published between April 2013 – April 2018, with an update in September 2019. Information about study aims, methodology and recommendations for improvement were extracted. We used a theoretical framework outlining the habits and skills required for healthcare improvement to consider how ethnographic research may foster improvement skills.

We included 274 studies covering a wide range of healthcare topics and methods. Ethnography was commonly used for healthcare improvement research about vulnerable populations, e.g. elderly, psychiatry. Focussed ethnography was a prominent method, using a rapid feedback loop into improvement through focus and insider status. Ethnographic approaches such as the use of theory and focus on every day practices can foster improvement skills and habits such as creativity, learning and systems thinking.

Conclusions

We have identified that a variety of ethnographic approaches can be relevant to improvement. The skills and habits we identified may help ethnographers reflect on their approaches in planning healthcare improvement studies and guide peer-review in this field. An important area of future research will be to understand how ethnographic findings are received by decision-makers.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-021-01466-9.

Research can help to support the practice of healthcare improvement, and identify ways to “improve improvement” [ 1 ]. Ethnography has been identified particularly as a research method that can show what happens routinely in healthcare, and reveal the ‘ what and how of improving patient care [ 2 ]. Ethnography is not one method, but a paradigm of mainly qualitative research involving direct observations of people and places, producing a written account of natural or everyday behaviours and ideas [ 3 ]. Ethnographic research can identify contextual barriers to healthcare improvement. For example, Waring and colleagues suggested that hospital discharge could be improved by allowing staff to have more opportunities for informal communication [ 4 ].

There have been advances in ethnographic methods that support its role in supporting healthcare improvement. Multi-site, collaborative modalities of ethnography have evolved that suit the networked nature of modern healthcare [ 5 ]. Similarly, rapid ethnographic approaches (e.g. Bentley et al. [ 6 ];) meet the needs of improvement activities to produce findings within short timeframes [ 7 ]. However, the production of sustained ethnographic fieldwork has waned in response to demands for rapid evidence [ 6 , 8 , 9 ]. Critics of rapid ethnographic methods worry that they are diluting ethnography within applied contexts more widely [ 5 , 10 ].

The relationship between ethnography and healthcare improvement has been the subject of methodological concern [ 8 ]. The first concern is that some research identified as ethnography does not fit within the ethnographic paradigm, merely collecting observational data without a theoretical analysis, interpretation or researcher reflexivity [ 11 ]. A second concern is whether the topics of ethnographic inquiry produce findings that are seen as useful for improvement [ 12 ], particularly if they do not make explicit recommendations or produce checklists [ 8 , 13 – 15 ]. Authors fear that ethnographic findings that capture complexity [ 16 ] and expose taken-for-granted behaviours and phenomena [ 14 , 17 ] may be too abstract to be relevant to healthcare improvement [ 8 ]. However, these critiques position ethnographic research as a product which may be taken up by healthcare improvers, rather than seeing ethnographic work itself as an improvement activity. We take the view that healthcare improvement aims to change human behaviour to improve patient care, and is therefore reliant on the development of particular skills and habits (such as good communication) [ 18 ]. We would consider that engaging in ethnographic research may support skill development and habit formation that serves healthcare improvement.

In the literature of ethnography in healthcare improvement, there is not much discussion of the close relationship between methodological features of ethnographic research, and their impact on improvement skills. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to describe current ethnographic methods and practices in healthcare improvement research and (2) to consider how these may affect habit and skill formation in the service of healthcare improvement [ 19 ].

This is a scoping review following the methods outlined by Arksey & O’Malley and later refined by Levac et al., [ 20 , 21 ] including a systematically conducted literature review and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR; see Additional file 1 for PRISMA checklist). No protocol was published for this review. Our literature search and analyses were conducted iteratively, searching reference lists and undertaking discussions with colleagues about key lines of argument. We also held a workshop at Health Services Research UK conference in 2018 on this topic to gain a wide range of stakeholder views.

Systematic retrieval of empirical papers and purposive sampling

Our search strategy was designed to capture a wide range of approaches to ethnography from different journals, healthcare settings and types of research environment. It was not our aim to capture every study using this methodology, but to map the current field. Thus we did not search grey literature, books or monographs. The search strategy was developed and piloted in consultation with a health librarian. Medline (on OVID platform), PsychINFO, CINAHL and EMBASE databases were searched, and six journals were hand-searched, including: BMJ Quality & Safety, Social Science and Medicine, Medical Anthropology, Cochrane library, Sociology of Health and Illness and Implementation Science. These databases were searched between dates April 2013 – April 2018 and an update was performed in September 2019 using the search terms outlined in Additional file 2 . We limited the search to these dates in order to capture the most recent methodological characteristics of ethnographic studies in this field.

We screened titles and then abstracts according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria detailed in Table Table1. 1 . We included studies which self-identified as using ethnography or ethnographic methods rather than using our own criteria. This is because ethnography can be hard to define, and use of criteria may risk excluding papers which exemplify the sorts of tensions and workarounds we are trying to capture.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The retrieved papers were screened by GB, SVO and SM based on inclusion and exclusion criteria (Table (Table1). 1 ). The total number of papers after screening titles, abstracts and full texts was 274 (Fig. (Fig.1 1 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 12874_2021_1466_Fig1_HTML.jpg

PRISMA statement of all references retrieved, screened and included in the scoping review

Numerical charting

Characteristics of each paper, such as title, authors, journal, year, country and healthcare subject area were extracted (see Table Table2 2 ).

Characteristics of studies in review

a some studies have been allocated to more than one region

Thematic analysis and development

We coded all 274 papers using NVivo software for stated aims and recommendations. This included close reading, and retrieval of key ideas and quotations from the papers that exemplified key ideas in relation to healthcare improvement, methodology and the authors’ reflections on these. The coded extracts of aims and recommendation in conjunction with the closer reading of the sub-sample were used to inductively develop conceptual ideas, such as how the corpus of papers explicitly aimed to contribute to healthcare improvement, and if not, how this affected the types of conclusions drawn. Some papers were read in greater depth to understand how the authors’ methods related to their findings and conclusions. In order to consider how ethnography supports habits and skills associated with healthcare improvement, we drew on a framework which identifies five habits of ‘improvers’: creativity, learning, systems thinking, resilience and influencing [ 19 ]. Applying this model to our selected papers, we mapped traits or approaches to the ethnographic studies that exemplified these habits either in the authors, or as part of developing these habits in others (e.g. healthcare decision-makers and professionals). Thematic interpretations and lines of argument were generated and discussed by all the authors.

Overview of study characteristics

The included studies covered a wide range of ethnographic methodologies and healthcare subjects, published internationally (Table (Table2) 2 ) in predominantly social science and clinical journals (see Additional file 3 ). The full list of the 274 included studies is available in Additional file 4 .

Most studies described themselves as an ‘ethnography’ or ‘ethnographic’, although some described their methodology as ‘mixed methods’ including ethnographic components. For example, Collet et al. conducted a mixed methods participatory action research study using observations to produce an “ethnographic description” [ 22 ].

Almost all studies relied on observation and interviews as the main data sources. It was not always specified whether researchers took a participant or non-participant approach to observation. There were some examples of other data sources e.g. video data, surveys, documents, field notes, diaries, and artefacts. A few examples contained a paucity of data, such as only video data [ 23 ], limited fieldwork [ 24 ], a small number of interviewees [ 25 ], or reliance on focus group data alone [ 26 ]. Methods associated with qualitative methodology (but not necessarily ethnographic) were also used, such as data ‘saturation’ to denote that additional data did not provide new insights into the topic [ 27 ].

There were a number of minority or unusual ethnographic variations:

Quantitative ethnography [ 23 ]: temporal coding of physicians' workflow and interaction with the electronic health record system, and their patient.
Cognitive ethnography [ 28 ]: “identifying and elaborating distributed cognitive processes that occur when an individual enacts purposeful improvements in a clinical context”.
Street-level organizational ethnography [ 29 ]: intensive case study methods to explore the implications of healthcare policy at a street level.
Phenomenological ethnographies [ 30 ]: focussing on the lived experience and meanings associated with a phenomenon.
Geo-mapping [ 31 ]: geomapping of selected service data to define Latino immigrant community before conducting interviews and observations.

Use of different types of ethnography to support healthcare improvement

We found that many studies used methods that could identify issues relating to power and vulnerability, with potential relevance to how healthcare improvement problems are defined and solved, and by whom [ 1 ]. For example we noted a significant minority of studies using institutional and critical ethnography, mostly in vulnerable populations (see Table Table3). 3 ). These studies were explicitly attentive to systems and power relations, rather than on individual practices. We suggest that the use of geographically-oriented methods such as geo-mapping and street-level organisational ethnography are also attentive to the power structures inherent in place and space, and could be relevant to other geographical healthcare improvement topics such as networked healthcare systems, care at home and patient travel for treatment.

Ethnographic methodology and its relevance to healthcare improvement

The high prevalence of ethnographic studies with vulnerable populations (e.g. psychiatry, end of life care) suggests that ethnography is also being conceptualised as an emancipatory method, reversing healthcare power structures in its focus. This has been a traditional focus of ethnography since social changes in power and representation in the 1970s, incorporated into the development of healthcare research methodology [ 40 , 41 ]. Some methods used were calculated to maximise the potential for supporting vulnerable groups, for example, Nightingale et al. [ 42 ] used focused ethnography (prolonged fieldwork in a small number of settings) to look at patient-professional interactions in paediatric chronic illness settings. The authors suggested that focussed ethnography is particularly suited to settings where fostering trust is essential. We would also suggest that ethnography may be particularly suited to settings in which participants are less able to verbalise their experiences.

The reviewed studies suggested that video ethnography can support healthcare improvement at a team level. For example, Stevens et al. [ 43 ] promoted video ethnography as a way to capture in-depth data on intimate interactions, in their study of elective caesareans. The video data allowed them to make use of timing data (e.g. of certain actions), physical positioning of different actors and equipment, and verbatim dialogue recording. The video data also suited the technical nature of the procedure, which was relatively time-limited. This form of data collection may not suit environments where healthcare activities are more spread out.

The impact of healthcare practitioner involvement in ethnographic fieldwork and findings

We noted that the use of ethnography for healthcare improvement has led to healthcare practitioners’ widespread involvement in data collection or analysis. We suggest that this is a form of negotiation across the healthcare-academia boundary, translating from ‘real world’ to data and back again. This has potential to create rich and relevant ethnographic studies that are geared towards improvement. However, some studies were undermined by a lack of reflexivity about the dual practitioner-ethnographer role.

A significant number of papers involved healthcare practitioners in fieldwork (e.g. Abdulrehman, 2017, Hoare et al. 2013; [ 37 , 44 ]). For example in Hoare et al. the lead researcher was a nurse, and wrote that they hoped “to bring both an emic and etic perspective to the data collection by bracketing my emic sense of self as a nurse practitioner in order to become a participant observer within my own general practice ” [ 37 ]. In this study, the findings fed directly into local service improvement as the lead researcher felt compelled to “share new ‘best practice’ information and join in the conversation.” There was little discussion about how this affected the generalisability of the findings, and whether their recommendations were adopted.

Similarly, Bergenholz et al. [ 45 ] conducted a study where a nursing researcher completed the main fieldwork and “assisted the nurses with practical care .” They acknowledged that “This may have caused limitations with regards to ‘blind spots’ in the nursing practice, but that it also gave access to a field that might be difficult for ‘outside-outsiders’ to gain .” However, there was no commentary on where the blind spots or extra access occurred, and how this may have affected the relevance and dissemination of their findings.

How might ethnography support healthcare improvement habits?

In this section, we evaluate the studies included in the review in terms of how their methods relate to improvement. We draw on the idea that successful improvement is based on a set of habits and their related skills acquired through experience and practice [ 19 ]. This section is structured around Lucas’s five habits of ‘improvers’: creativity, learning, systems thinking, resilience and influencing [ 19 ]. Under those headings, we describe the mechanisms by which ethnographic studies can support healthcare improvement habits, using illustrative examples.

Resilience is defined as being adaptable, particularly tolerating calculated risks and uncertainty, and proceeding with optimism. Being able to recover from adverse events is core to improvement, reframing them as opportunities. Adaptation and the ability to bounce back from adverse events and variation are core to improvement.

Tolerating the uncertainty of ethnographic data collection

While we did not relate these traits to any particular ethnographic approach in our studies, we would consider that undertaking any ethnographic project requires resilience, as data collection is inherently exploratory and uncertain. For example, Belanger et al. wanted to know how health care providers and their patients approach patient participation in palliative care decisions. The authors explicitly eschewed the pull to create guidelines or other formalised knowledge, but aimed to explore the “unforeseen and somewhat unavoidable ways in which discursive practices prompt or impede patient participation during these interactions.” [ 46 ]

Creativity is defined as working together to encourage fresh thinking by generating ideas and thinking critically.

Using a theoretical lens

Researchers may consider healthcare through a particular theory or framework (e.g. private ordering [ 47 ], masculine discourse [ 48 ], compassion [ 49 ]). The restriction of the theoretical lens enables critical thinking, and keeps the ethnographer creatively engaged. For example, Mylopoulos & Farhat [ 28 ] used the concept of adaptive expertise in a cognitive ethnography to explore “the phenomenon of purposeful improvement” in a teaching hospital. This theoretical lens revealed that clinicians were engaging in “invisible” improvement in their daily work, in “specific activities such as scheduling, establishing patient relationships, designing physical space and building supporting resources”. The authors suggested that these practices were devalued in comparison to more formal improvement activities, justifying the utility of the ‘adaptive expertise’ theory in bringing the daily improvement practices to light.

Challenging current problems and perspectives

We identified studies that challenged or reframed existing improvement problems e.g. Mishra [ 50 ]. This role removes the ‘blinkers’ of improvement research [ 51 ], and can ‘dissolve’ previously intractable implementation problems. For example, Boonan et al. [ 52 ] studied the practice of bar-coded medication from the perspective of nurses using the intervention. In their discussion, the authors challenge the assumption that if you introduce technology, then you will mitigate human factor risks. They highlighted that external pressures on hospitals perpetuate this perspective, and that “nurses and patients are consequently drawn into this discourse and institutional ruling, to which they are not oblivious”. Their recommendation was to understand the skills of nurses in tailoring technology to meet individual patients’ needs rather than trusting in systems blindly.

Learning is defined as harnessing curiosity and using reflective processes to extract meaning from experience.

Inviting reflection

We noted that some studies did not make explicit recommendations for improvement, but wrote their findings in a manner that would invite reflection on its subject matter. For example, Thomas & Latimer [ 53 ] wrote that they view their role as provocateurs of new ideas, stating that their intention “is not to propose specific policies or discourses designed to change or improve practice. More modestly, we hope that by analysing the everyday and by theorising the mundane, this article will ignite reflexive, ethical and pluralistic dialogues – and so better communication between practitioners, parents and the wider lay public – around reproductive technologies and medical conditions” (authors’ underline; p.951-2) [ 53 ]. Others such as Mackintosh et al [ 54 ] used their discussion section to examine their results in the context of other theories and provide illumination: “Our focus on trajectories illuminates the physiological process of birth and the unfolding pathology of illness (and death). This frame provides a means for us to link the agency of those involved in organising the care of acutely ill patients with the wider socio-political factors beyond the clinic, such as governmentality and risk (Heyman 2010, Waring 2007), death brokering (Timmermans 2005) and the medicalisation of birth and death (De Vries 1981).” (p.264). These two examples show that ethnographic work can be offered as an opportunity for learning and reflection, without a translation to specific recommendations.

Supporting a more ethical, expansive, inclusive, and participatory mode of healthcare

Problem-finding is highlighted as an important part of learning in improvement [ 19 ]. Several studies paid attention to multivocality and power, using this to find problematic, unethical and exclusive practices in healthcare. For example, some studies reported previously unheard viewpoints [ 55 – 57 ], or identified restrictive organisational barriers and normative assumptions [ 58 , 59 ]. Others promoted ethnography as a way of exploring ethics and morality [ 47 , 60 , 61 ], such as criticising research that prioritizes the needs of individuals over the good of society [ 62 ]. Ross et al. [ 63 ] suggested that it is also more ethical to use critical ethnography than other evaluative methods in researching vulnerable populations (e.g. neurological illness), by being able to “explore perceived political and emancipatory implications, [clarify] existing power differentials and [maintain] an explicit focus on action” .

Some studies directly researched power within the healthcare setting. For example, Batch and Windsor’s study of nursing workforce suggested that senior nurse leaders should use their positions to advocate for better working conditions [ 35 ], “ Manageable nurse/patient ratios, flexible patient-centred work models, equal opportunity for advancement, skill development for all and unit teamwork promotion”. Challenging traditional cultural assumptions that have produced and reproduced stereotypes is problematic because they most often are, by their very nature, invisible. In a more critical approach, Gesbeck’s thesis [ 62 ] on diabetes care work challenges the very mechanism of achieving healthcare improvement through research, stating that “we need to change the social and political context in which health care policy is made. This requires social change that prioritizes the good of the society over the good of the individual—a position directly opposed to the current system oriented toward profit and steeped in the ideology of personal responsibility.”

Systems thinking

Systems thinking is defined as seeing whole systems as well as their parts and recognising complex relationships, connections and interdependencies.

Suggesting reorientation to new ‘problem’ areas

We found that many ethnographic studies emphasised skills of synthesis and connection-making, reorienting improvement to different areas, for example in overarching policy recommendations (e.g. Hughes [ 36 ]; Liu et al. [ 64 ], Matinga et al. [ 65 ]), or resetting priorities. For example, Manias’ [ 66 ] ethnography of communication relating to family members' involvement in medication management in hospital suggests that “greater attention should be played on health professionals initiating communication in proactive ways ” [p.865]. In another example, Cable-Williams & Wilson’s (2017) focussed ethnography captures cultural factors within long-term care facilities. Their discussion suggests that acknowledgement of death is under-represented in front-line practice and government policy, reorienting discussions towards an integration of living and dying care.

Exposing hidden practices within the everyday

We found that several studies drew attention to ‘hidden’ practices in healthcare work, allowing them to evaluated and improved. For example, we found reference to practices such as coordinating [ 67 ], repair [ 68 ], caretaking [ 69 ], scaffolding [ 68 ], tinkering [ 52 ] and bricolage [ 58 ]. We also found that some studies had new interpretations of ‘the everyday’ or ‘taken-for-granted’ (e.g. nursing culture [ 34 , 35 , 45 , 70 ], interprofessional practice [ 67 , 71 – 75 ]). Authors’ outputs included frameworks [ 76 ] or models [ 69 , 71 , 77 , 78 ] that map these types of practices in a way that is helpful for intervention development or quality improvement. For example, Mackintosh et al. [ 54 ] looked at rescue practices in medical wards and maternity care settings using Strauss’s concept of the patient trajectory. Their findings highlighted the risks inherent in the wider social practices of hospital care, and suggested that improvement was needed at a level “beyond individual and team processes and technical safety solutions.”

Influencing

Influencing is defined as engaging others and gaining buy-in using a range of facilitative processes.

Direct translation of findings to targets for improvement

Lucas suggests that to be influential, ethnographic studies need to have some empathy with clinical reality, whilst being facilitative and comfortable with conflict [ 19 ]. This was shown in ethnographic studies that made pragmatic recommendations, such as in Jensen’s study of clinical simulation. They advised that simulation might be useful in staging “adverse event scenarios with a view to creating more controlled and safer environments.” ( 80). In MacKichan et al. [ 79 ] observations and interviews were used to understand how primary care access influenced decisions to seek help at the emergency department. The authors made empathic, actionable recommendations such as “ simplifying appointments systems and communicating mechanisms to patients.” (p.10).

Evaluating the context of healthcare improvement

By capturing contextual and social aspects of healthcare improvement, ethnographic evaluations can support leaders and managers who are trying to implement improvement activities. This is a particularly helpful trait in ethnographic studies that pay attention to politics, governance and social theory in their evaluation of new interventions, “zooming out” [ 80 ] beyond the patient-clinician interaction to broader social networks. For example, Tietbohl et al. [ 81 ] investigated the difficulties of implementing a patient decision support intervention (DESI) in primary care through the theoretical lens of relational coordination between “physician and clinical staff groups (healthcare professionals)”. The authors’ recommended attention to the “underlying barriers such as the relational dynamics in a medical clinic or healthcare organization” when creating policies and programs that support shared decision-making using support interventions. This sort of insight can make it more likely that new policies or interventions will succeed. This skill was particularly fertile in the tradition of techno-anthropology, exploring technology-induced errors and the real-world interaction between people and technology, e.g. decision-support tools [ 81 – 86 ], the introduction of robot caregivers [ 87 ] and clinical simulations [ 88 ]. Other approaches included an investigation of one intervention or change but with a theoretical lens of inquiry.

Summary of findings

This scoping review has identified the methodological characteristics of 5 years of published papers that self-identify as ethnography or ethnographic in the field of healthcare improvement. Ethnography is currently a popular research method in a wide range of healthcare topics, particularly in psychiatry, e.g. mental health, dementia and experiential concerns such as quality of life. Focused ethnography is a significant sub-group in healthcare, suggesting that messages about the importance of research timeliness have taken hold [ 89 ].

We have identified ethnographic methods reported in these papers, and considered their utility in developing skills and habits that support healthcare improvement. Specific practices associated with the ethnographic paradigm can encourage good habits (resilience, creativity, learning, systems thinking and influencing) in healthcare, which can support improvement. For example, using relevant theories to look at every day work in healthcare can foster creativity. The use of critical and institutional ethnography could increase skills in ‘systems thinking’ by critically evaluating how healthcare improvement problems are defined and solved, and by whom.

Comparison with previous literature

This scoping review is the first to consider how current ethnographic methods and practices may relate to healthcare improvement. Within the paradigm of applied healthcare research, there is normative value in being ‘useful’ or ‘impactful’ in our research, which affects our prospects for funding and career success [ 12 ]. However, our review has uncovered a multitude of ways that an ethnographic study can be useful in relation to healthcare improvement, without creating actionable findings. We found a spectrum of interactions with healthcare improvement: some authors explicitly eschewed recommendations or clinical implications; others made imperative statements about required changes to policy or practice. However, this diversity was not necessarily a reflection on how ‘traditional’ the ethnographic methodology was. This challenges the paper by Leslie et al. which puts ethnographic studies in two output categories with respect to healthcare improvement: critique versus feedback [ 8 ]. Instead, we uncovered a variety of ways that ethnography can support healthcare improvement habits, such as encouraging reflection, problem-finding and exposing hidden practices in healthcare.

We did find that supporting healthcare improvement through ethnographic research can require strategic effort, however. For example, we noted that several authors wrote multiple articles based on the same project, often for different types of journal to reach different audiences such as diverse readerships in health services and academic settings. For example, Collier and colleagues published two papers based on a video ethnography of end-of-life care (both in 2016), one in a healthcare quality journal [ 32 ] and one in a qualitative research journal [ 76 ]. The former is shorter, with explicit recommendations for patient safety, whereas the latter is longer, has more detailed results and long sections on reflexivity. Similarly, Grant published an article in a sociology journal [ 90 ] and a healthcare improvement paper [ 91 ] on the same work about medication safety. The sociological paper covered “spatio-temporal elements of articulation work” whereas the other put forward “key stages” and risks, suggesting that it was more closely oriented to improvement.

There have been some considerable debates about changes in ethnographic methods and tools, with concerns about lost researcher identity, dilution of the method, and challenges to “upholding ethnographic integrity” [ 92 ] . We contest this, suggesting that new variants such as focussed and cognitive ethnography are evolving in response to the complexity of hospitals and healthcare [ 93 ], while also being highly regulated, standardised and ordered by biomedicine. Such complex environments cannot be studied and improved under one paradigm alone. Ethnographic identity and method have also been affected by the cross-pollination of ethnography with other social science paradigms and applied environments (e.g. clinical trials, technology development). Debates about theoretical and methodological choices are not only made merely with respect to healthcare improvement, but also in response to professional pressures (e.g. university requirements for impact) [ 12 ], and the mores of taste situated within the overlapping communities of practice that evaluate ethnographic healthcare research [ 94 ]. That said, we echo previous authors’ calls for attention to reflexivity, particularly in embedded or clinician-as-researcher roles [ 95 ].

Our scoping review challenges a previously expressed concern that ethnographic studies may not produce findings that are useful for improvement [ 10 , 12 , 16 ]. By considering different ethnographic designs in relation to skills and habits needed for improvement, we have shown that studies need not necessarily produce ‘actionable findings’ in order to make a valuable contribution. Instead, we would characterise ethnography’s role in the canon of healthcare research methodologies as a way of enhancing improvement habits such as comfort with conflict, problem-finding and connection-making.

Strengths and limitations

This review has a number of limitations. The search may not have found all relevant studies, however the retrieved papers are intended as an exemplar rather than an exhaustive or aggregative review. The review is also limited to journal articles as evidence of researchers’ approach to improvement. This ignores many other ‘offline’ and ‘online’ activities such as meetings, presentations, blogs, books, and websites, which are conducted to disseminate findings and ideas. Our reliance on self-report for the identification of ethnographic studies will have excluded some studies within an ethnographic paradigm who chose different terms for their methodology (e.g. critical inquiry, case study). The strengths of this paper are its comprehensive coverage, incorporating all representative studies in healthcare research published within a five year period, and a wide range of ethnographic sub-types and healthcare subjects, drawn from an international pool of research communities.

We did not prescribe the right way for ethnographers to engage in healthcare improvement, indeed, we have identified that a variety of approaches can be relevant to improvement. The habits we identified may help ethnographers reflect on their approaches in planning healthcare improvement studies and guide peer-review in this field. Issues of taste, traditionalism and researcher identity need to be scrutinised in favour of value and audience. An important area of future research will be to understand how ethnographic findings are received by decision-makers, and further focused reviews on the relationship(s) between ethnographic methods, quality improvement skills and improvement outcomes.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Lorelei Jones, Natalie Armstrong, Justin Waring and Bill Lucas for their insightful comments and direction in the undertaking of this work.

Authors’ contributions

NJF and GB led the development and conceptualization of this scoping review and provided guidance on methods and design of the scoping review. GB, SVO and SM made contributions to study search, study screening, and all data extraction work. All authors analysed the data. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the paper, and all authors have read and approved the manuscript.

This paper is independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research CLAHRC North Thames. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.

NJF is an NIHR Senior Investigator. GB is supported by the Health Foundation’s grant to the University of Cambridge for The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

The original online version of this article was revised: due to incorrect figure 1 and the number of included papers need to be changed from "283" to "274".

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A Correction to this paper has been published: 10.1186/s12874-022-01587-9

How it works

Ethnographic Research – Complete Guide with Examples

Published by Carmen Troy at August 14th, 2021 , Revised On August 29, 2023

What is Ethnographic Research?

Ethnography is a type of research where a researcher observes people in their natural environment.

Ethnographers spend time studying people and their day-to-day lives and cultural activities carefully. It takes a long-term commitment and exciting methods of data collection .

It has two unique features

The researcher carries out ethnographic research in a natural environment.
A researcher acts as a participant and researcher at the same time.

History of Ethnographic Research

During the period of colonialism, anthropology emerged as a formal and notable discipline. Anthropologists started to study traditional people and their cultures. There are many types of ethnographic studies used for various purposes.

Uses of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research has the following uses;

Documentation of endangered cultures
Studying distant or new cultures.
Studying and observing people’s behaviour in a specific society or community over a more extended period with changing circumstances.

Example: Malinowski’s six years of research on the people of Trobriand islands in Melanesia.

Today ethnographic research is also used in social sciences.

Examples: Investigations done by detectives, police officers to solve any criminal mystery. Investigations are carried out to learn the history and details of culture, community, religion, or games. The research was performed to understand the social interactions of the people. Research to understand the roles of families and organisations.

Advantages of Conducting Ethnographic Research

There are various methods of research based on the requirements and aim of the investigation. Here is the list of the key features of ethnographic research

You can conduct ethnographic research alone.
It allows you to observe the changes in people’s behaviour and culture over time and record it.
You can conduct it in any place.
It allows you to be a part of the community as a participant and take a close look at their lifestyle.
You can gather a piece of detailed information with abundant experience, which helps you in further research.
It provides the opportunity and pleasure of adventure as well as research.
You don’t need to spend anything on the setup and equipment.
You can learn to use any language of your choice during the research.
You can find out about historical changes and events.
You can use and enhance your skills and knowledge.
You are solely responsible for experimenting.
You get the opportunity to get to know the underlying realities and opinions of the people.
You get the chance to focus on the verbal and non-verbal behavior of the people.

Disadvantages of Ethnographic Research

It requires a lot of time.
It is challenging to conclude the results.
The researcher needs to work alone.
It requires patience, skills to interact with people, and staying within the community as a community member.
Personal safety and privacy would be at risk.

Does your Research Methodology Have the Following?

Great Research/Sources
Perfect Language
Accurate Sources

If not, we can help. Our panel of experts makes sure to keep the 3 pillars of Research Methodology strong.

Does your Research Methodology Have the Following

What to do Before Starting your Ethnographic Research?

You need to identify your research question(s) and decide the mode of data collection. It’s better to choose a small group of people and aim to complete your studies within a short period.

It would help if you asked a few questions to yourself.

Who will be your target participants?
Do you have enough time to conduct the research?
What’s the purpose of your study?
What kinds of resources do you have?
Do you have enough funds to conduct your research?
Do you have access to the community you want to study?

Types of Ethnographic Research

Realistic ethnographic research.

It is unbiased documentation written in the third person. You can use the collected notes for interpretations.

A case study is a documented history and detailed analysis of a situation concerning organisations, industries, and markets. It aims at discovering new facts of the condition under observation.

It includes data collection from multiple sources over time.

Critical Ethnographic Research

It focuses on the marginalised community to study inequality and dominance.

How to Conduct Ethnographic Research?

Step 1: problem formulation.

Before conducting any research, the essential step is selecting the problem you want to carry out your study.

Step 2: Select a Research Setting

After Selecting a research problem, you need to select the location of your research. It will help if you prefer a familiar place and community in which you can fit comfortably.

Step 3: Get Access to the Community

You need to get access to the community you want to study. How do you reach the community you want to study?

You need to get official permission to conduct your research on a specific group of people. You can also join the community as a volunteer instead of a researcher.

There are two types of access, such as:

Open access: You don’t need to seek permission to conduct your research and collect data in this type of access. You can observe the population. You need to get accepted by the group to proceed with your research.

Example: Public in market places, parties, concerts, etc., are regarded as open-access groups.

Closed-access: In this type of access, you need to get permission from the gatekeeper of the community you want to study.

Example: Schools, colleges, corporations, etc.

Step 4: Represent yourself to the Group

It would help if you asked yourself a few questions before introducing yourself to the group members.

How will you introduce yourself to the community you want to study?
What would be your role in the group?
How actively do you want to participate in the group’s day-to-day activities?
Will the group accept you as a researcher and allow you to conduct your research?

You can either inform the participants about the experiment, and it’s called the overt approach. You can hide the research and oversee people’s behaviour. It’s called a covert approach.

You can also act as a participant of the community performing the activities like the group, called active observation. It allows the community to feel more comfortable with the researcher.

Similarly, you can keep yourself away from the group without performing any activities like them and observe them as a researcher. It is called passive observation.

It would help if you tried various approaches until you find a suitable method to proceed with your research.

Step 5: Collecting and Recording the Information

You can collect the data by the following methods;

Observation: You can participate in the group activities or observe the group’s behavior, either informing them about the experiment or keeping them unaware of the investigation.

Interviewing: You can carry out direct conversations with all group members or obtain information from a specific member of the group. It’s better not to rely on the informants as they may interpret the data according to their perception rather than delivering in its actual context.

Archival Research: You can also use existing information stored in the previous researchers’ records to proceed with your research.

It becomes difficult to gather and record the information at the same time.

What should you do in this situation?

You can maintain a notepad to record your observation immediately or sometimes wait until you leave the setting to record your observation. It’s better to note down your observations as soon as possible before you forget them and struggle to recall them. You can write down your field notes or record the people’s audios or videos while talking to them.

Your notes should include the following features:

Running/Field Notes: these are the observations that you note down daily. The idea is to record your observation immediately after observing it. It would help if you observed the individual activities of the group members and perspectives.

How to describe Ethnographic Research?

Ethnographic research involves immersing in a community or culture to understand its nuances. Researchers observe, participate, and interview to grasp social practices, beliefs, and behaviors. It provides rich insights into how people experience and interpret their world.

Ethnographic Research

What is ethnographic research.

Ethnography is a research method that involves immersing oneself in the natural context of individuals to collect quantitative insights into their behavior and culture. This method emphasizes observation, engagement, and analysis of human experiences in real-world settings.

Ethnographic research is widely used in UX design since it provides detailed data about users' preferences and behaviors. This data is used to create products and services that meet the needs of diverse user groups. It also ensures user-centered and culturally sensitive design. Research of this type helps designers comprehend how users interact with technology in a range of settings. It also reveals areas that have the potential for growth.

While ethnographic research has several advantages, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider, even more so when conducting ethnographic research in cross-cultural contexts. It's important for researchers to be aware of their own biases and to approach the culture being studied with respect and sensitivity.

Benefits and Limitations of Ethnographic Research

Thanks to its immersive nature, ethnographic research offers several advantages over other qualitative research methods, for example:

It enables researchers to understand the cultural context in which their subjects live, work, and interact.

It offers crucial insights into the factors that influence how individuals make decisions, act, and perceive their environment.

It allows for flexibility in data collection since researchers can adapt their methods as they go along and explore new areas of interest that may emerge during the study.

While ethnography can provide an understanding of human behavior and culture, researchers must be aware of its limitations and possible ethical concerns. Some of the most common challenges associated with ethnographic research include its time-consuming and expensive nature, the difficulty of addressing certain research questions or populations effectively, the potential language barriers, and the challenges to accessing the culture to study.

Still, this method reveals how different cultures operate and interact. For example, a study of workplace culture in Japan might show differences in communication styles or decision-making processes compared to a similar study conducted in the United States.

Ethnographic Research Methods

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method to study human behavior and societies and culture.

The most common methods of ethnographic research are participant observation and interviews.

Participant Observation: The researcher immerses themselves in the natural environment of the people they study. They observe their behavior firsthand and may even participate in activities alongside them.

Interviews: The researcher conducts interviews with individuals from the culture of interest to understand how they perceive and experience their culture. These interviews can be structured (with a predefined or standardized set of questions) or unstructured (less formal conversations that allow the researcher to explore topics as they arise) and may be conducted one-on-one or in a group setting.

Ann Blandford, expert in qualitative user studies and professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College London, explains the characteristics of a semi-structured interview:

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Examples of Ethnographic Research in Various Fields

Ethnographic research has been employed in several fields to understand human behavior and culture better. Here are some examples:

Anthropology: Anthropologists have long used ethnographic research to study different cultures worldwide. Margaret Mead is a well-known example of an ethnographic researcher who studied the people of Samoa, revealing important information about their social and cultural practices.

Sociology: Sociologists also use ethnographic research to understand social phenomena. For example, Erving Goffman's classic work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life used participant observation to explore how individuals present themselves to others in everyday interactions.

Marketing: Ethnographic research is increasingly being used in marketing to gain insights into consumer behavior. For example, a company may conduct ethnographic research by observing consumers in a natural setting (such as a grocery store) to understand their purchasing decisions and what factors influence those decisions.

UX Design: Ethnographic research allows designers to understand their users' habits, mental models and behaviors deeply. For instance, a UX designer working on a travel booking platform might use ethnographic research to investigate how travelers plan and book their trips.

Ethical Considerations in Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research involves observing individuals in their natural environment, which can raise ethical concerns. It's important for researchers to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of their studies and obtain informed consent from participants.

One fundamental consideration in ethnographic research is privacy. Researchers must take steps to protect the privacy of their subjects.

Obtain permission before taking photographs or recording conversations.

Be careful not to reveal personal information about subjects that could lead to their identification.

It’s also important to obtain informed consent from subjects before conducting any study activities. This means that people understand the study's purpose, what will be involved, and any potential risks or benefits. Ensure that any study does not cause harm or distress to subjects, either physically or emotionally. This may involve avoiding sensitive topics or situations that could trigger trauma.

The Role of Technology in Ethnographic Research

Technology has become an increasingly important tool for ethnographic research. Here are a few ways in which researchers use technology in ethnographic research:

Digital Recording: One of the most basic ways to use technology in ethnographic research is through digital recording. Researchers can use audio or video recording devices to capture conversations, interactions, and other observations.

Online Platforms: Social media is making it easier for researchers to observe and interact with people from all over the world, which can be especially useful when studying cultures that are difficult to access due to geography or political barriers.

Mobile Apps: Mobile apps can also be helpful tools for ethnographic research. For example, a researcher could develop an app that allows participants to record their daily activities and thoughts, offering unique perspectives on their behavior and experiences.

Virtual Reality: Virtual reality (VR) is another emerging technology with potential ethnographic research applications. VR allows researchers to create immersive environments that simulate real-world situations, allowing participants to interact with simulated objects and people as if they were actually there.

While technology can provide many benefits for ethnographic research, it's important for researchers also to consider its limitations. For example, relying too heavily on digital recordings may prevent researchers from noticing important nonverbal cues or context that may be lost when not observed directly in person. Additionally, some cultures may need more access or knowledge about specific technologies, making it difficult to use them in certain contexts.

Learn More about Ethnographic Research

Learn how to get better results from ethnographic research.

Explore when and how to conduct ethnographic research in different contexts.

Read this comprehensive guide to conducting ethnographic research .

Understand some of the key methods used in ethnography .

Literature on Ethnographic Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on Ethnographic Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Ethnographic Research

Take a deep dive into Ethnographic Research with our course Mobile UX Strategy: How to Build Successful Products .

All open-source articles on Ethnographic Research

Ethnography.

7 Simple Ways to Get Better Results From Ethnographic Research

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Ethnographic Research

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Ethnography is a qualitative method for collecting data often used in the social and behavioral sciences. Data are collected through observations and interviews, which are then used to draw conclusions about how societies and individuals function. Ethnographers observe life as it happens instead of trying to manipulate it in a lab. Because of the unpredictability of life, ethnographers often find is challenging to nail down their projects in a protocol for the Board to review. Nevertheless, the Board needs a good explanation of a study in order to approve it. Helping the Board to understand the parameters of the study, the situations in which the participants will be contacted and will participate, and the risks involved will allow them to approve studies where some flexibility is needed.

The following sections generalize typical situations in an ethnographic study. However, your study may not fit these models exactly, so please contact our staff if you have questions about what is appropriate, etc. The Board expects you to interact with your participants in a way that is natural, polite, and culturally appropriate. D iscuss the cultural context and how that shapes your methodology, demonstrating that you are aware of your participants' particular needs and sensitive to the way that they navigate their world.

Interviews and observations are common methods for data collection in an ethnographic study; please see Interviews and Observations for more information.

As an ethnographer becomes integrated in a community, he or she will talk to many people in order to become familiar with their way of life and to refine the research ideas. Not everyone that an ethnographer interacts with is necessarily a participant in the research study . Participation depends on the type of information that is collected and how the data are recorded. If you are recording information that is specific to a person and about that person’s experiences and opinions , and if that information can be identified with a specific person (whether anonymous or not), that person becomes a participant in the study. For example, talking to an individual on the bus about general bus policies and atmosphere would not qualify the conversation as part of the human subjects aspect of your research. Talking to that same individual about their specific experiences as a passenger on the bus and recording that information in your notes qualifies that individual as a participant in the study. Depending on whether you gather identifying information about the person and the potential to harm the person will determine what level of consent information you should provide and how it should be documented. Understanding when a person becomes a participant will help you to understand when you should obtain consent from that person or when an interaction can be defined as just a casual conversation. For specific examples of when a casual conversation becomes an interview, please see Interviews for more information.

Ethnographers are often involved with their participants on a very intimate level and can collect sensitive data about them, thus it is important to recognize areas and situations that may be risky for participants and develop procedures for reducing risk . Participants in ethnographic studies may be at risk for legal, social, economic, psychological, and physical harms. A well-designed consent process can be an easy way to reduce risk in a study. For participants where consent has limitations (i.e. children , prisoners , other vulnerable participants ), additional requirements may be made in order to facilitate the consent process, such as providing a minor with an assent form and obtaining parental consent (though it may be necessary to modify this process so that it is culturally appropriate). Some participants may be highly sensitive to risk because of who they are and the situation in which they live and you may need to make additional accommodations for participants where the potential for harm is high. Often a participant’s potential for harm doesn’t end when your interaction is over; protecting the materials you collect will continue to protect your participants from harm. Loss of confidentiality is a risk that participants may face when participating in an ethnographic study; in some cases, participants may not be interested in keeping their information confidential but it is important to maintain a clear dialog with participants so that they understand the implications of sharing their data with you. Identifying the needs of your participants and modifying your approach in order to accommodate those needs will help to protect participants from incurring harm as a result of participating in your study.

Before you include participants in your study, you will need to identify who is eligible to participate. Often in ethnographic studies it is important to integrate into the community and tap into the community’s network in order to identify potential participants. You may use word-of-mouth methods to reach your participants or more formal methods such as advertisements, flyers, emails, phone calls, etc (please include samples of your recruitment materials with your study). When you describe your procedures in your protocol, it is important to include information about how you will navigate the community you will study and access eligible participants.

The consent process begins as soon as you share information about the study, so it is important that when you contact participants, you are providing them with accurate information about participating in the study. Participants should know early on in the process that you are researcher and you are asking them to participate in a study, and you shouldn’t provide information that is misleading or inappropriately enticing. For further guidance on recruiting participants, see Participant Recruitment .

The consent process outlined in the Basic Consent section describes the baseline expectation for obtaining consent from participants, as described in the federal regulations . However, this scenario does not always fit every research study nor is it adequate for providing informed consent to all participants, and there is some flexibility in modifying the informed consent process. The Oral Consent section describes how to conduct an oral consent procedure, which modifies the consent procedure to accommodate participants where presenting a written consent form would be inappropriate. If you feel that it is necessary to provide your participants with a modified informed consent process, it is important that you provide a complete and accurate description of the process, and provide justification as to why the process is necessary and will provide the best informed consent opportunity for your participants. Including information about cultural norms, language issues, and other important factors will help the Board to understand your population and why it is necessary to approach the population in the manner in which you recommend. As you develop your procedure, it is important that you consider not only the informed consent meeting, but also the recruitment process and how you will document consent.

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Ethnographic Research: Types, Methods + [Question Examples]

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research approach that involves observing variables in their natural environments or habitats in order to arrive at objective research outcomes. As the name suggests, ethnographic research has its roots in ethnography which is the in-depth study of people, cultures, habits and mutual differences.

This type of systematic investigation interacts continuously with the variables and depends, almost entirely, on the data gathered from the observation of the research variables. Ethnographic research is sometimes referred to as a thick description because of its in-depth observation and description of the subjects.

In recent times, ethnography has been adopted to the internet in the form of netnography. This means that researchers can now study how online communities interact in order to identify social communication patterns.

What is Netnography?

Simply put, netnography is online ethnography research, that is, it is the conducting of ethnography research via the internet. Netnography adapts the ethnographic research methodology to the study of online communities in order to discover the natural behavioral patterns of internet users.

As a modern model of ethnographic investigation, netnography uses the data gathered through digital communications in varying online communities to trace and analyze patterns of social interaction. Just like ethnography research, netnography also requires close observation of interactional patterns in order to arrive at the most objective conclusions.

Types of Ethnographic Research

There are several types of ethnographic research, namely; business, educational and medical ethnographic research. All based on different fields of human endeavor and each type is defined by specific characteristics. Ethnographic research is a multi-dimensional research design that can be adapted to different fields including business, medicine, education, and psychology.

Business Ethnographic Research

Business ethnographic research is a research design that involves observing consumer habits and target markets in order to discover true market needs and the overall disposition to your product or service. It is an extremely beneficial research tool that can help your organization identify its customers’ needs and satisfy market demands.

This research method combines different techniques including fieldwork, physical interviews and online surveys in order to gather useful data on the consumer habits of target markets. Business ethnographers use these techniques to analyze how clients interact with an organization’s services and come up with useful conclusions that can be used to develop effective market strategies.

In carrying out a business ethnographic research, it is necessary to work with a customer or client-oriented framework that focuses on target markets rather than the business. The aim of this research design is to discover recurring client behavioral patterns that can serve as key market insights.

In order to gather useful data, the researcher must ask the right questions. Some question samples for business ethnographic research include the following:

What do you enjoy about this product or service?
Why do you use this product?
What specific needs does the product meet for you?
What specific needs does the product fail to meet?
Does the pricing of the product equate its value?

Educational Ethnographic Research

Educational ethnographic research is a research design that involves observing teaching and learning methods and how these affect classroom behaviors. This research model pays attention to pedagogy, its effects on learning outcomes and overall engagements by stakeholders within the classroom environment.

Typically, educational ethnographic research studies students’ attitudes, academic motivations, and dispositions to learning. To do this, the researcher combines non-participant observation methods with direct participant observation techniques in order to gather the most relevant and objective data.

Question samples for educational ethnography research include:

Do you enjoy this teaching method?
Does the teacher allow for feedback in his or her classes?
Does the teaching method communicate objectives clearly?
What is the student’s attitude toward learning?

What is Pedagogy: Definition, Principles & Application

Medical Ethnographic Research

Medical ethnographic research is a type of ethnographic research used for qualitative investigations in healthcare. This research design helps medical practitioners to understand the dispositions of patients ranging from the simplest to the most complex behavioral patterns.

Medical ethnographic research enables the healthcare provider to have access to a wealth of information that will prove useful for improving a patient’s overall experience. For example, through ethnographic research, a healthcare product manufacturer is able to understand the needs of the target market and this will, in turn, influence the product’s design.

In addition, medical ethnographic research exposes healthcare professionals to insights on the complex needs of patients, their reaction to prescriptions and treatment methods plus recommendations for improvement. Here are a few questions that can be used for medical ethnographic research:

For how long have you used this drug?
For how long have you been on this treatment?
What positive changes have you noticed so far?
Have you noticed any side effects so far?
Does this medication or treatment meet your needs?

Method of Ethnographic Research

Typically, there are 5 basic methods of ethnographic research which are naturalism, participant observation, interviews, surveys, and archival research. Carrying out ethnographic research will involve one or more research techniques depending on the field, sample size, and purpose of the research

Live and work

Also known as naturalism, live and work is an ethnography research technique in which the researcher observes the research variables in their natural environment in order to identify and record behavioral patterns. It may involve living in the natural environment of the group or individuals being researched for a period of time in order to record their activities.

Naturalism is the oldest method of ethnographic research and it may create some degree of rapport between the ethnographer and the research variables . When using this method, the researcher must ensure that he or she limits interference with the subjects to the barest minimum in order to arrive at the most objective research outcomes.

Naturalistic observation can be disguised or undisguised. Disguised naturalistic observation involves recording the subjects in such a way that they are unaware of being studied while in undisguised naturalistic observation, the research subjects are aware of the fact that they are being understudied.

The live and work method allows the researcher to gather the most accurate and most relevant data as a result of observing the research subjects in their natural environment. However, this technique is not favored by modern ethnographers, especially in fields like medicine and education, because it is expensive and it takes a lot of time.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is a data collection method in ethnography research where the ethnographer gathers information by participating actively and interacting with the research subjects. This method is quite similar to life and work techniques.

The major difference between participant observation and live and naturalism is that in the former, the ethnographer becomes an active member of the group being observed. This gives the researcher access to information that can only be made available to members of the group.

There are 2 types of participant observation which are, disguised participant observation and undisguised participant observation. In the former, the ethnographer pretends to be a part of the research subjects while hiding his or her true identity of being a researcher.

In undisguised participant observation, the ethnographer becomes a part of the group being observed and reveals his or her identity as a researcher to the group. This technique is more prone to reactivity, unlike disguised participant observation.

The primary advantage of participant observation as a research technique is that the ethnographer is exposed to more information. He or she is better able to understand the experiences and habits of the research subjects from the participant’s point of view.

There are a number of limitations associated with this research technique. First, the presence of the researcher can affect the behaviors of the research subjects; especially with undisguised participant observation, and this can affect the authenticity of the result.

In addition, there can be the issue of biased research outcomes. As a result of the relationship between the researcher and the group, the ethnographer may become less objective and this can lead to experimental bias which affects the research outcomes.

An ethnographic interview is a qualitative research method that merges immersive observation with one-on-one discussions in order to arrive at the most authentic research outcomes. In this research design, the ethnographer converses with members of the research group as they engage in different activities related to the research context.

During this contextual inquiry, the researcher gathers relevant data related to the goals and behaviors of the members of the research group. As the ethnographer observes the research subject in its natural environment, he or she has the opportunity to ask questions that reveal more information about the research group.

An ethnographic interview is usually informal and spontaneous, and it typically stems from the relationship between the researcher and the subjects. The ethnographic interview often results from the participant observation method where the ethnographer actively engages with the members of the research group in order to find out more about their lives.

As a two-way research method, an ethnographic interview allows the researcher to gather the most relevant and authentic information from the research group. However, it can also be affected by experimental bias as a result of the relationship between the ethnographer and the subjects.

An ethnography survey is an inductive research method that is used to gather information about the research subject. This research design is also referred to as analytic induction and it involves outlining hypotheses in the form of survey questions and administering these questions in the research environment.

Administering a survey will help the ethnographer gather relevant data, analyze this data and arrive at objective findings. The aim of carrying out an analytic induction is to discover the causative factors of certain habits of the research group and come up with accurate explanations for these behaviors.

In order to gather the most relevant responses using this, it is best to include different question types in your survey. Likert scale questions , open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions , and close-ended questions are common types of ethnography survey questions.

To make your ethnography survey even more effective, you can create and administer it online using data-collection tools like Formplus . Formplus allows you to build your ethnography survey form in minutes using the Formplus builder and you can easily share your survey with respondents via available multiple sharing options.

High survey drop-out rates and survey response bias are some of the major limitations of this research method. However, this method is fast and cost-effective especially when carried out online and if done right, it can reveal useful insights about a research group.

Archival Research

Archival research is a qualitative approach to ethnographic research in which the researcher analyzes existing research, documents and other sources of information about the research group in order to discover relevant information. This method can also be referred to as understanding.

Archival research adopts ethnography to a collection of related documents from the past which substitute for actual physical presence in the research environment. It pays absolute attention to every piece of information about the research variables.

As a method of data collection in ethnography, archival research reduces the chances of experimental biases since the researcher does not directly interact with the subjects. Also, it allows the ethnographer to have access to a large repository of research data that results in more accurate findings.

However, because archival research is often subject to randomization, its findings may not accurately reflect the research group. Also, archival data is not full-proof as there may be biases when the data is recorded and this will affect the research outcomes.

When to Use Ethnography Research

Ethnographic research should be used in the early stages of user-focused systematic investigations. This is because ethnography research helps you to gather useful information about the dispositions, goals, and habits of the research variables in specific contexts.

Ethnography research is most suitable for complex research processes especially in markets and customer settings. In market research, ethnography allows organizations to gain insights into consumer habits and receive first-hand feedback on the extent to which their product or service meets the needs of target markets.

This research design is also useful for examining social behaviors and interactions. It is extremely beneficial in the study employees’ disposition to organizational work culture and policies.

While ethnographic research helps businesses bridge product gaps and improve consumers’ experience, there are certain situations where this research design is counter-productive. Ethnographic research should not be used in processes that require statistically valid analysis, test-runs or group comparisons.

How to Conduct Ethnographic Research with Online Surveys

Formplus is a data-gathering tool that allows you to create and administer online surveys for ethnography research easily while saving time and cost, and improving your research sample size.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to conduct ethnographic research with online surveys using Formplus:

Access Formplus Builder

In the Formplus builder, you can easily create your ethnography survey form by dragging and dropping preferred fields into your form. To access the Formplus builder, you will need to create an account on Formplus .

Once you do this, sign in to your account and click on “Create Form ” to begin.

Edit Form Title

Click on the field provided to input your form title, for example, “ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY”.

Click on the edit button to edit the form.
Add Fields: Drag and drop preferred form fields into your form in the Formplus builder inputs column. There are several field input options for survey forms in the Formplus builder.
Edit fields
Click on “Save”
Preview form.

Customize Form

Formplus allows you to add unique features to your ethnographic survey form. You can personalize your form using various customization options in the builder. Here, you can add background images, your organization’s logo, and other features. You can also change the display theme of your form.

Save your ethnographic survey form and share the link with respondents.

Advantages of ethnographic research .

Ethnographic research allows you to have access to a wider and more accurate data scope than other research designs. This qualitative research approach collects first-hand information about the research variables and gives the ethnographer a wider range of data to work with thereby resulting in more objective research outcomes.
Ethnography research enables the researcher to partake in the experiences of the research variables in their natural environment.
Ethnography research accounts for complex group behavioral patterns and highlights interrelationships among research variables.
It helps researchers understand the scope, reason(s) and context of the habits of research variables.

Disadvantages of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research requires expertise and it is time-consuming. It takes time to observe research variables in order to arrive at cogent findings.
Ethnographic research is capital-intensive too.
It is subject to experimental biases stemming from the relationship between the subjects and the researcher.
Issues of data sample size can also arise with ethnographic research. This is because small data samples can suggest false assumptions about the disposition of the research group while large quantities of data may not be processed effectively.

Risks Associated with Ethnographic Research

Unlike other research methods, ethnographic research tends to be sporadic and extends for a long period of time. And although respondents can stop participating in the research process at any time, there are still a few risks they are likely to encounter during this research

1. Psychological Risks

During uncomfortable topics, respondents may feel psychological triggers like guilt, fear, sadness, etc This can cause them to lose interest in the research or pull out from participating. In some cases, research participants may need constant reassurance to encourage them.

2. Social Risks

Depending on the research subject, there are social risks that are posed to a respondent during ethnographic research. These risks include stigmatization or condemnation from their community particularly if confidential information is shared and friction in personal relationships. This can further lead to a psychological risk.

3. Physical and Economical Risks

Although these risks are uncommon in ethnographic research, it is imperative that you prepare for them as a researcher. In politically volatile communities, or research that involves tedious physical activity, physical risks are on the high side.

Economic risks can arise when research participants are removed from their jobs or limited from carrying out profitable ventures.

During your study, ensure that you disclose the possible risks to your research participants and elaborate on how you intend to mitigate these risks.

FAQ’s on Ethnographic Research

Does Ethnographic research come before or after a survey?

Most research uses data collected from various studies to validate a hypothesis or seek better clarity. So it is often conducted after a large-scale survey or quantitative segmentation study. However, it all largely depends on what the goal of the research is.

Is ethnographic research qualitative or quantitative?

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method where researchers study their respondents in their own environment

How long does an ethnographic research project take?

The duration of your ethnographic research completely depends on the scope of your study. However, they usually last for a couple of months.

Do ethnographers use field guides?

Yes. In ethnographic research, there are field guides to help guide the research process. However, it’s just a tool, and most times, it isn’t followed verbatim on the field.

How do I create a database for comparative analysis during Ethnographic?

You can compile your data using the Formplus PDF Builder to create PDFs of your analysis or create forms for documentation and save them using the secure Formplus storage.

Conclusion

Ethnographic research helps individuals and organizations to gain useful insights into users’ behaviors as influenced by their natural environment. This form of systematic investigation bridges the gap between the ethnographer and the research variables because the researcher has the opportunity to be a part of their experiences.

Administering online surveys for ethnographic research will speed up your data collection process and would allow you to save costs and have more control over your sample size. You can use Formplus to create and administer online ethnographic research surveys easily.

Connect to Formplus, Get Started Now - It's Free!

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Ethnographic Research

Within anthropology, ethnographic research traditionally focused on a deep study of a group of people who were treated as bounded and clearly identifiable through their shared cultural values. Examples include Margaret Mead’s study of Soamoa and Ruth Benedict’s study of the Japan. Modern ethnographic research often focus less on a presumed definable cultural group than it does on specific issues or aspects of life, such as T. W. Ward’s study of Salvadoran street gangs in Los Angeles or Karen Ho’s exploration into Wall Street and the culture of financial markets.

The word ethnography refers to both the method and product of one’s research. Thus, a book developed through ethnographic research methods is called an ethnography and films drawing on ethnographic techniques are called ethnographic film.

Some key features of ethnographic research are that it:

Is characterized by participant observation
Incorporates both interviews and casual interactions between the researcher and interlocutors or informants
Makes use of documents
Involves long-term fieldwork
Can involve collection of artifacts
Is holistic, bringing together complex aspects of a group in order to develop a deep and detailed understanding of behavior

In ethnographic research, more than simply practicing observation, one tries to live the life of those being studied and become a member of the community to the extent possible. The goal is to try to develop an empathetic understanding of the experiences of others while also trying to shed one’s own presuppositions and assumptions about what is normal and natural in human behavior.

There are at least two forms of ethnography: realist and critical. In realist ethnography the research tries to accurately portray the lives of the group studied in great deal, emphasizing how cultural values shape behavior. Often in this type of ethnography the research and the researcher stand somewhat apart from those being studied and the researcher takes a somewhat external perspective in describing and explaining behavior. In this approach there is a strong emphasis on cultural relativism and the goal is to find the logic that motivates behavior without passing judgment on that behavior.

Critical ethnography is more pragmatic in orientation with the gaol of using ethnographic methods to improve a situation that is seen as unjust by the research and/or his or her informants. This approach does not simply involve the study and description of a group, but advocates on behalf of people who are perceived to be marginalized from mainstream society.

In all forms of ethnography, researchers try to identify and be sensitive to the differences between emic and etic perspectives on behavior. The video below provides more detail on the ideas of emic and etc perspectives.

What is ethnographic research?

Last updated

19 January 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

In business, ethnographic research involves studying consumers in their natural habitat when using a product, and their journey and experience around it. This allows companies to gather extensive data about their target audience that helps inform a good and actionable persona.

Let's take a closer look at what ethnographic research is all about.

Analyze ethnographic research

Get insights into habits, trends, and social dynamics when you analyze ethnographic research in Dovetail

What is ethnographic research in business?

Ethnographic research gathers consumer data by observing customer behavior in their natural environment in real-time. This research aims to understand firsthand how consumers use products instead of asking them questions or relying on subjective surveys or reviews.

By using ethnographic research, marketers and analysts gain valuable insights, identify gaps in the market, and discover inspiration for revolutionary marketing and development decisions. This method works for both B2B and B2C products.

Many consumers can't effectively describe what place a product takes in their lives or what changes might make the product more appealing. A professional who observes them in a natural environment can gather this information and draw actionable conclusions.

Organizations consider implementing ethnographic research when they need to:

Develop data-backed personas

Find out what the customer needs and wants

Study the consumer's behavior

Develop new products

Test new products

Test new product formats (SaaS, apps)

To conduct ethnographic research, companies can sometimes hire third-party professionals to:

Avoid internal bias or offense on the part of people who have helped design the product or whose salary depends on the success of the product

Avoid consumer changes in behavior (subconscious or conscious) when being studied by those who’ve built what they are using

Ensure a pure outside perspective and interpretation of collected data

Ensure successful data gathering since ethnographic research requires training and experience

Ethnographic research is a valuable tool that helps companies develop new products, adjust their marketing strategy, build stronger relationships with customers, and much more.

This method allows you to gather information beyond surveys or user testing findings. You gain native-party data that carries significant additional value, such as hidden opportunities or uncovering new consumer verticals.

What is the difference between qualitative and ethnographic research?

Traditional qualitative market research involves conducting interviews, user testing, and presenting questionnaires to the consumer. By speaking to a consumer or client directly, or simply observing them using the product, it's possible to collect in-depth information about their needs, pain points, and requirements.

Qualitative data is often sufficient to gain valuable insights into customers' behavior and design an effective strategy. However, this information may be incomplete since it focuses more on a specific goal than the larger picture.

Ethnographers simply observe consumers in their traditional environment. This allows the consumer to act naturally and provide much more free-flowing data than during a more controlled interview.

Examples of successful ethnographic research

Ethnographic research has been around for a while. Many large companies have been using this method to develop new products.

Intel's netbook

One of the biggest companies that use ethnographic research is Intel. They began implementing this methodology in the 1990s to check if they could go from B2B to B2C sales.

The company had sufficient time and research to gather marketing data from various sources. However, ethnographic research and analysis allowed them to take the research to a new level.

Ethnographic research helped Intel develop a handheld netbook-type PC for emerging markets. The design idea came from how children carry pen and paper while walking around the classroom. An in-depth analysis of this behavior created insight into portability, flexibility, and convenience.

Miele's vacuum cleaners

Another big success story related to ethnographic research involves a German company. A vacuum cleaner manufacturer, Miele, observed its target audience at home to note their cleaning habits. They noticed that people with allergies spent much more time cleaning their homes to ensure all allergens were gone.

This inspired the company to develop a vacuum cleaner with a special sensor. The sensor informed the user when the surface was dust-free. This cut the cleaning time significantly.

Ethnographic research methods

When you work with a professional ethnographer, they can suggest several methods to help gather the data you need. These methods can include:

Full participation

The ethnographer participates in the process of using a product. To do that, they need to become a part of the group without revealing their goals. This comes with certain ethical issues and limitations.

However, in some cases, if the consumer knows that they are under observation, they may not act naturally and inadvertently hinder the results of the research.

Off-site observation

Off-site participation involves observing consumer behavior remotely. For example, they could be studying conversations on a shoppers' forum or recording interactions in Facebook groups. The observer doesn't participate in conversations but only collects data as a silent participant.

Full observation

Full observation is similar to full participation since it doesn't reveal the observer's role in the process. People are unaware that they are being observed. This could happen in stores, street fairs, supermarkets, and other public places where consumer behavior is important.

If the observer reveals their role, consumers can adjust their behavior. Meanwhile, informing large groups of people about an observation experiment could be problematic.

Passive observation

Passive observation involves informing consumers about the role of the observer. However, the ethnographer studies the behavior silently, asking occasional questions about the consumer experience and encouraging the participant to think aloud.

This allows the observer to focus on gathering data without trying to maintain their role as a participant.

Active observation

Active observation involves the ethnographer participating in the process more often than a passive observer does. For example, in a supermarket, they can come close to the buyers to listen to their discussions about choosing a product.

When you hire a professional for ethnographic research, they can decide which method to use to best achieve your data-gathering goals.

Once ethnographers collect the data, they work together with your marketing team to look for patterns, behavioral changes, and challenges that are encountered. The processing of ethnological data can be complex and time-consuming. However, it can provide unexpectedly efficient results.

Advantages of ethnographic research

Ethnographic research can be highly advantageous for companies that need to develop new products or streamline their marketing strategies. The key benefits of this consumer research methodology are:

Native-party data

Ethnographers help marketers build a perfect data-backed persona by gathering native-party data. It provides information about consumer behavior, preferences, attitudes, values, and motivations. Ethnographic research makes it possible to get pure data for in-depth analytics.

Valuable insight

When you gain access to the consumer's real-life behavior in real time, it's easier to gain insight into what they need and require.

The information you get is much richer than the data you receive from user testing, interviews, or surveys. It allows you to discover pain points that consumers may not even think they have (as in the case of Intel’s netbook).

True consumer needs

When designing a buyer persona based on zero-party data, marketers often end up creating solutions that cater to the customer's desires instead of their needs. Ethnographic research allows you to dig deeper into what the consumer requires.

This, in turn, can help you make important decisions about new product development, features for existing products, and models of service.

With a professional ethnographer at the helm, you can gather much more data than with traditional qualitative research methods. It's possible to find out new things about your target audience or even discover opportunities for new audience segments.

Some companies don't just gain insight for new product development; they reinvent their entire approach.

Testing opportunities

Ethnographic research provides valuable testing opportunities for new products. You can find out how your audience uses the products versus how much the products are liked or disliked.

Your consumers have the experiences, knowledge, and understanding to provide in-depth feedback about a product. Meanwhile, ethnographers can translate this data into efficient conclusions as well as actionable insights , new ventures, and opportunities to explore.

Disadvantages of ethnographic research

While highly advantageous, ethnographic research for business purposes comes with several challenges.

Time issues

The main challenge that comes with implementing ethnographic research is the time it takes to conduct it. It could take several hours to observe just one person. Ethnographers require quality time with your targeted users. Coupled with the time you need for analytics, the results will not come quickly.

In spite of its ability to capture insights far beyond what competitors could conceive, let alone act on, for companies that need to make fast marketing and business decisions, ethnographic research isn’t always the right fit.

Natural environment

Creating a natural environment for consumers in which to behave normally isn't always easy. Not all customers are willing to participate in experiments in their own homes. Meanwhile, participating in consumer activities without revealing the ethnographer's intentions comes with certain ethical issues.

Cameras, notes, and questions can cause the consumer to act unnaturally and hinder the results of the experiment.

Professionals needed

If you want to conduct ethnographic research, you need a professional ethnographer to do it. However, having an in-house ethnographer, with an average salary of over $100,000 , isn't always a possibility.

Companies may hire ethnographers and their teams on a contract basis, which raises the costs of the project considerably.

Digital ethnographic research

To save time and money, some organizations take advantage of digital ethnographic research. It involves making videos and photos of the participants and keeping online diaries.

Digital ethnography uses a wide variety of methods to help achieve the same results as traditional ethnographic research does. Besides being less time-consuming and costly, this type of research can:

Encourage participants to agree to the experiment since they don't need to invite strangers to their homes

Allow ethnographers to review videos and photos to look for patterns and draw conclusions

Eliminate the need for physical presence

Provide an opportunity for long-term studies without the associated costs and efforts

Digital ethnography comes with certain downsides as well. It takes anonymity out of the process. Consumers are always aware of being observed, so they may not act as naturally as the project demands. Human-to-human interaction is always going to be more natural and true to nature than human-to-camera or recorder.

Meanwhile, ethnographers don't interact with the participants personally. Without the ability to ask follow-up questions or evoke guided conversations, they could miss valuable information, actions, and emotions.

When to use ethnographic research

Ethnographic research can be highly valuable for some projects but may not be worth the time for others. If you don't have sufficient consumer data to develop a new product, test existing products, or streamline current solutions to fit the customers' pain points, you can try employing ethnographic research.

Ethnographic research is advanced qualitative research that helps you improve your company's bottom line. If your traditional qualitative research methods are failing, you may want to consider working with an ethnographer in either a digital or on-site environment.

What is the meaning of ethnographic research?

Ethnographic research involves studying the behavior of people in their natural habitat. Businesses employ ethnographic research to study their customers' needs and pain points. It's also useful for uncovering hidden opportunities, testing new projects, or streamlining existing products.

What is the main focus of ethnographic research?

The main focus of ethnographic research is people's behavior and motivations. In business, it involves studying how people interact with a company's products. By focusing on consumer behavior and motivations, companies can identify pain points and offer relevant solutions to satisfy consumer motivations.

What is ethnographic research with examples?

Ethnographic research is the process of gathering consumer data while they are in their natural environment. For example, an ethnographer can observe what it looks like for a student to take an online course. Perhaps they imagine a quiet space with everything a student needs, but find the student attending to their children while cooking dinner with their laptops open to the course. The student can describe the better life she wants for herself and her children while bouncing a child on her knee. Unexpected and real human observations like this can help gather invaluable insights for business and humanize your product design process.

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Ethnographic Research: Methods And Examples

Ethnography is a research method used to learn about the lives of others. It helps us understand how and why…

Ethnography is a research method used to learn about the lives of others. It helps us understand how and why people behave differently in various societies or cultures.

Ethnographic research is the process of collecting data about a group of people. It’s a popular technique used by anthropologists, sociologists and others who study human behavior. It’s mainly thought of as a qualitative research method, which means it allows us to study subjects that don’t lend themselves to numerical data. But, it can be used to collect quantitative data as well.

To find out more about the meaning of ethnographic research, read on.

What Is Ethnographic Research?

Ethnographic research methods, when to use ethnographic research methods, examples of ethnographic research, challenges of ethnographic research, advantages of ethnographic research.

When we wish to understand a particular social phenomenon, ethnographic research can be a useful tool.

Ethnography is a great method to understand how cultures work and affect the people who belong to them. To do this properly requires detailed observations about what is going on in a particular society. Here are some defining features of this type of research:

We can conduct ethnographic research in the natural setting of subjects or respondents. Researchers must travel to where their subjects are. The fieldwork can be completed by several researchers who specialize in this type of work if it spans a large sample size or a wide geographical area.
Ethnographic researchers avoid making judgments about specific cases. They don’t judge people on dimensions such as morality and social behavior. Instead, they describe their experience of social groups. They don’t treat people as objects for data collection but as subjects who must give their informed consent for such research.
There are focused ethnographic methods where only one type of data is collected. For example, if the subject is food eaten in a certain culture, researchers may concentrate on kitchen habits, recipes and how food is sourced.
You can collect demographic data, which includes information about the culture’s people. This is where quantitative data can also come into play.
Ethnographers need large amounts of data. The more time researchers spend immersed in the subject’s society, the better understanding they’ll have of the culture.

Now that we’ve answered the question, “What is ethnographic research?”, let’s look at how it’s done.

As we’ve discovered, ethnographic research is a method often used to study another culture or group of people. It’s a powerful tool to understand the world better. It can be done through observation, active participation and even interviews with the people being studied.

In the field, anthropologists often take notes while observing their subjects. They also record conversations and keep a journal of what they see. Later, these findings get transcribed and analyzed for accuracy. In addition, multiple researchers can work to get a clear picture of a culture or community. All of this data can go into a book, article, or scientific report that describes the findings of the group’s research.

Let’s look at some specific research techniques used in an ethnographic study:

Observational Study

As the goal of ethnographic research is closely studying an individual (or group) in their natural environment, observation is the primary method used. Researchers can observe the same people or groups on a regular basis for several weeks or months at a time.

Paired Observation

The researchers can interview two people within the same culture. They may be related to each other in some way or involved in different actions. This method is used to gather data in many types of research, including medical research.

Participant Observation

The researcher joins a group of people being studied, either by living with them or by observing them for an extended period of time during the day. They record what they see. Participant observation is most often used in social science fields, including anthropology, social psychology and sociology.

Field Notes

Field notes come in two types: primary and secondary. In some types of research, such as participatory action research, field notes are the primary documents for analysis and interpretation. ( https://woodlees.com/ ) However, field notes are often secondary documents used to provide background information for analysis and interpretation.

While ethnography is a useful method of research, it isn’t suitable for all situations.

Some consider ethnographic research more art than science. Cultures and cultural phenomena aren’t easy to quantify, so they can be open to interpretation. That’s when the meaning of ethnographic research really comes into its own.

Quantitative researchers try to gather data objectively through numbers and statistics, while qualitative researchers use their observations to describe what they see taking place in a particular culture or society. Quantitative research tries to infer from past experiences to predict future events or results. Qualitative researchers aim to understand a culture or society by listening to what its members have to say about it.

Ethnographers can employ quantitative methods in their study. But, it’s the qualitative component that sets this method apart. The data can shed light on an issue. That’s why ethnographic methods can be so effective in getting to know groups of people, their cultures and social interactions. It tends to be used in anthropology, sociology and political science but has wider applications too.

Ethnographic research can be used to study issues big and small, cultural or business-related. Here are a few examples of its uses:

The principal subject of ethnography or ethnological research is to study culture, society, ethnic groups and human behavior.
Among cognitive scientists, ethnographic research is usually done to understand the general functioning of cognition in a particular group of people.
In business, we can see examples of ethnographic research used for product development, where companies learn how consumers use their products.
It also applies to marketing research, where companies can develop a sense of how the public thinks about their product.
In social work, ethnographic research is used to find out how people cope with problems and challenges they face in their daily lives.
Another application is in the design of interactive technologies. By observing how people interact with existing technologies, engineers can design new ones that are more effective and user-friendly.

These are just a few examples of how ethnographic research can be used.

As with other research methods, there are challenges to ethnographic research. It’s important to consider these before choosing the right research method. Here are some points to keep in mind:

It’s time-consuming. In almost every case, it takes a lot of effort for anthropologists to go into another culture and learn about it.
Results from ethnographic research only apply to the people being studied. It’s difficult to generalize those results to other cultures or societies as a whole.
The specifics of what was said in an interview may not be reported accurately due to communication barriers. It may also be because researchers weren’t sensitive to the people being studied. If an ethnographer is insensitive to a culture’s people, they may not talk with them freely.
It’s subject to interpretation. A researcher’s interpretation of the data may be biased.
Sometimes people don’t want their cultural information shared with outsiders. This may prevent them from speaking clearly or giving consent to researchers.
There are practical and ethical concerns of ethnographic research. However, getting prior consent of the participants, maintaining their confidentiality and a proper research design can mitigate these issues.

Just as there are drawbacks, there are clear advantages to using ethnographic research. Let’s recap these:

Ethnography can make it easier for researchers to understand a culture and the way people see themselves. This gives researchers a wider view of how cultures function, which can be very helpful.
Ethnographic research also allows researchers to document a society or group of people. People around the world can then benefit from that knowledge.
It provides a different way to collect data about social structures and the way people interact with one another.
We can also use ethnographic research as a form of advocacy. For example, anthropologists can help those being studied gain access to resources that were previously unavailable to them. By studying remote or marginalized communities, we can better understand their needs and priorities.

These are just a few of the strengths of ethnographic research, a widely used method in the social sciences. Ethnographic research can provide valuable insights into people and how they live. That’s important information to have for a professional on an upward trajectory.

Understanding the nuances of consumers, markets and social change can give you a huge leg up. With Harappa’s Thinking Critically course, our learners achieve this and more. Decision-making, planning and course correction are all easier when teams are equipped with the frameworks and knowledge to think better.

Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as What is Case Study Research Methodology, Meaning Of Qualitative Research , Examples of Experimental Research and How To Improve Cognitive Skills to upgrade your knowledge and skills.

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Chemistry Education Research and Practice

Representing chemistry culture: ethnography's methodological potential in chemistry education research and practice.

A goal in chemistry education research and teaching is to make chemistry education inclusive to our diverse students. Ethnography is one approach that can support this goal, because it supports researchers and educators in questioning what is considered ordinary by exploring chemistry as a culture. By exploring chemistry as a culture, we can understand how we represent the discipline of chemistry to our students in what we teach, how we teach, and who we teach. Questioning the ordinary aspects of research and teaching can help us work towards creating a more inclusive chemistry culture for our students, researchers, and instructors. Within this perspective, the authors explore ethnography as a research methodology and an approach to understanding experiences in practice. This perspective explores how different choices in research design, such as the research questions, theoretical framework, methods, and methodology framing, lead to different goals and representations of chemistry culture. This perspective aims to start conversations around what we can learn from different representations of chemistry culture for chemistry practice by questioning what is taken for granted in the learning theories chosen, approaches to interventions, and systematic barriers. In its potential to illuminate how chemistry culture is represented and transmitted to students, ethnography can help create more inclusive, accessible, and supportive spaces for learning and interdisciplinary research.

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Representing Chemistry Culture: Ethnography's Methodological Potential in Chemistry Education Research and Practice

S. Schechtel and A. Bongers, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D3RP00272A

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Methods and practices of ethnographic research are closely connected: practices inform methods, and methods inform practices. In a recent study on the history of qualitative research, Ploder (2018) found that methods are typically developed by researchers conducting pioneering studies that deal with an unknown phenomenon or field (a study of Andreas Franzmann 2016 points in a similar direction).
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Ethnography is a research method that involves hands-on, on-the-scene learning and the diversity of culture at home and abroad. It is the primary method of social and cultural anthropology, but also relevant to many other fields of study and personal experiences. Learn more about ethnography from the Anthropology@Princeton undergraduate program.
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Breaking Down Barriers – Using Ethnography to Build Cultural Understanding

Ethnography – An Introduction

Participant Observation

Cultural Informant Interviews

Analysing and Describing Ethnographic Findings

Best Practices for Conducting Ethnographic Research

How Ethnography Differs from Other Qualitative Methods

The Ethical Considerations of Ethnographic Research

Informed Consent

Respecting Privacy and Confidentiality

Code of Ethics

The Challenges of Conducting Ethnographic Research

Gaining access to the people being studied

Time Commitment

Analysis and Interpretation

Conclusion – Ethnography is a Powerful Tool

Related Terminology:

Anthropology Glossary Terms starting with E

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Qualitative research methodologies: ethnography

What is ethnography?

Box 1 Key features of ethnographic research 2

What should I be looking for in an ethnographic study?

Box 2 Nine observational dimensions and their descriptions 11

Box 3 Triangulation in ethnography

Box 4 An ethnographic study of professional relationships

Why choose ethnography?

Box 4 Further reading

Journal articles

Summary points

12 Ethnography

Introduction

Defining Ethnography

Historical Foundations of Ethnography

Ethnography as Methodology

Ethnographic Attributes

Ethnography and Culture

Ethnography and Contextualization

Ethnography as Iterative

Ethnography and Empathy

Ethnography and Narrative

The Story of the College Visit

Paradigmatic Plasticity

The Story of the Conference Incident

Interpretivism

Critical Research

Participant Observation

Duration of Time in the Setting

Resemblance between Researcher and Members of the Researched Community

Level of Participation

Field-Note Writing

Ethnographic Interviews

Ethnographic Comportment

Future Directions

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The Ultimate Guide to Qualitative Research - Part 1: The Basics

Defining ethnographic research

What is ethnographic research?

What is the purpose of ethnographic research?

What are examples of ethnographic research?

Participant observation

Interviews and focus groups

Document collection

Reflections

Organizing data

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Defining your research questions

Choosing theoretical perspectives

Entering ethnographic fieldwork

Ethnographic collection of data

Considerations during fieldwork

Further development in ethnographic fieldwork

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Ethnographic research as an evolving method for supporting healthcare improvement skills: a scoping review

Sandra van Os

Conclusions

Supplementary Information

Systematic retrieval of empirical papers and purposive sampling

Numerical charting