Ethnography
Purpose of the Design
Ethnography comes from the Greek ethnos, meaning a people or cultural group, and graphic, meaning to describe. Ethnographic literally means to describe a people or cultural group. Using culture as the theoretical framework for studying and describing a group, ethnography’s origins are associated with anthropology and, to some extent, sociology. Although social scientists do not necessarily agree on what culture is, they do see it as the organizing principle for doing ethnography. For example, some focus on shared meanings with a group while others focus on what one needs to know to behave appropriately in some context. Through long-term immersion in the field, collecting data primarily by participant-observer and interviewing, the researcher develops the ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) needed for getting at how people within a cultural group construct and share meaning. (Glesne, 2011, p. 17)
Design Types
Critical or Realist Ethnography
Autoethnography
Sampling Procedures
Purposeful/criterion sampling
Data Collection (Methods)
- Observation of behavior and action expressed through group ideas and belief systems through cultural immersion
- Interviews (unstructured or semi-structured)
- Artifact or symbol(ic) collection
- Fieldwork/ fieldnotes (journaling, memos, other sources)
Data Analysis
- Development (through coding) of themes
- Analyzing data through description of the culture and emergent themes learned from the culture.
- Chronological examination and patterns of meanings (events, processes et al.)
- Secondary Data Analysis
Validity
- Intensive, Long Term Involvement
- Participant Validation/Member Checking (Maxwell, 2005)
- “Rich” Data
Resources
- Clifford, J., & Marcus, G.E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
- Fetterman, D.M. (2010) Ethnography: Step by step (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- LeCompte, M.D., & Schensul, J. J. (1999) Designing and conducting ethnographic research (Ethnographer’s toolkit, Vol. 1). Walnut Creek, CA:AltaMira
- Lincoln, Y., & Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
- Wolcott, H. F. (1984). Ethnographers sans ethnography: The evaluation compromise. In D.M. Fetterman (Ed.), Ethnography in educational evaluation (pp. 177-210). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Ethnography: A way of seeing (2nd ed.). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.