ethnographic research design example

• 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. 

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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.

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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:

• Transcript loading…

Examples of Ethnographic Research in Various Fields

© CIFOR, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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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2 Research Design

• Published: May 2018
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Chapter 2 demystifies practices of ethnographic research by discussing the balance between structure and serendipity surrounding its design. The author pursues this in two ways: first, by discussing the dynamic mode of structured improvisation through which ethnographers perform their research and, second, by introducing a framework for ethnographic decision-making—based on the concept of social science sampling—which highlights many of the major considerations affecting the research choices ethnographers make. Through this discussion, the author illustrates the complementary strategic and improvisational imperatives that in-the-field ethnographers embody. The second part of the chapter is organized around several key phases of the research process including (a) the choice of a research topic; (b) decisions regarding research settings; (c) aspects of data collection—including expanding on the first chapter’s discussions of positionality, fieldnote writing, and interviewing; and (d) techniques and sensibilities through which researchers analyze their data.

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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.

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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.

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Qualitative study design: Ethnography

• Qualitative study design
• Phenomenology
• Grounded theory

Ethnography

• Narrative inquiry
• Action research
• Case Studies
• Field research
• Focus groups
• Observation
• Surveys & questionnaires
• Study Designs Home

To describe the characteristics of a particular culture/ethnographic group. 

Ethnography is the study of culture (Taylor & Francis, 2013) it is in many ways similar to anthropology; this being the study of human societies and cultures. 

Exploration and data collection can occur in either an emic or etic approach. Emic meaning that the observation happens from within the culture. Etic meaning the observation is external looking in (Taylor et al., 2006) 

Used to explore questions relating to the understanding of a certain group's beliefs, values, practices and how they adapt to change. (Taylor & Francis, 2013) 

Ethnographic studies can be about identifying inequalities. For example exploring racial and cultural aspects of how a cultural group functions and the rules that guide behaviours. (Taylor & Francis, 2013) 

One form of ethnography is an auto-ethnography which involves exploration of the self as the topic being explored. 

The researcher places themselves as a ‘participant observer’ amidst the culture. 

The setting is a very important consideration within ethnographic studies as the exploration of the people and their behaviours must be within the context of that cultural situation. 

Methods used include, but are not limited to: observation, interviews, focus groups, review of documentary evidence and keeping field notes. (Taylor & Francis, 2013) 

Steps involved include:  

Identify the culture to be studied  

Identify the significant variables within the culture 

Review existing literature 

Gain entrance 

Immerse within the culture or observe the culture 

Acquire the informants 

Gather data 

Describe the culture 

Develop theories. 

(Taylor & Francis, 2013) 

Direct insight into the lives and experiences of the people and the group of interest. 

Allows for rich detailed data to be collected (Howitt, 2019). 

Provides an opportunity for researchers to uncover new unknown ways of thinking. Researchers may become aware of behaviors, trends and beliefs that are present within one culture although these may be previously unknown to other cultures. This enables new opportunities for improved ways of viewing and solving issues within other cultures.   

Limitations

Biases can be apparent because a researcher will always bring with them their own culture and own perspective which may impact their interpretations of the experiences they observe within this different culture. 

Genuine co-operation and engagement from the people of interest may not always be forthcoming and rapport might be difficult to establish. 

There can be a greater cost involved for this study type than others. Due to the need for transport, accommodation and researcher time that is spent in the field among the participants. This can be greater than what would be spent in a different research methodology where the engagement may be limited to a laboratory or shorter duration. 

Certain logistics can pose challenges for this type of research approach, such as travelling and gaining access to communities depending on their unique cultural values, for example there are many indigenous societies that only permit people of certain genders to have access. 

As the setting may be very specific to a particular group or community of people it may not be possible to generalise and apply the findings very broadly. 

Researchers need to be aware of the impact that their presence can have on the behaviours of the population they are investigating. 

The “Hawthorne effect” can be a limitation to observing genuine behaviours within a group. This is a situation founded by Dickson and Roethlisberger in 1966 when they reviewed previous experiments conducted at the Hawthorne factory. These experiments observed the ways that different influences, such as the level of lighting, impacted on the efficiency of factory workers. Their re-examination demonstrated that participants can behave differently to what they usually would when they are aware that they are being studied or recorded. As such, the methods selected need to counteract this effect for all study types, but for ethnographic studies especially, as authenticity of the cultural experience is quite important to ethnographic methodology. 

Example questions

What expectations and beliefs do people within specific communities hold about their healthcare options? 

What practices are being undertaken by healthcare professionals in specific settings and are these consistent with best practice? 

What barriers are certain communities experiencing in relation to different healthcare access? 

Are people within a specific community receiving the appropriate information and communication about aspects of their health for them to then make informed educated decisions? 

Example studies

Coughlin, C. (n.d.). An ethnographic study of main events during hospitalisation: perceptions of nurses and patients . Journal of Clinical Nursing, 22(15–16), 2327–2337.  

Molloy, L., Walker, K., Lakeman, R., & Lees, D. (2019). Mental Health Nursing Practice and Indigenous Australians: A Multi-Sited Ethnography. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 40(1), 21–27. 

Rainsford, S., Phillips, C. B., Glasgow, N. J., MacLeod, R. D., & Wiles, R. B. (2018). The ‘safe death’: An ethnographic study exploring the perspectives of rural palliative care patients and family caregivers. Palliative Medicine, 32(10), 1575–1583. 

Newnham, E., McKellar, L., & Pincombe, J. (2017). ‘It’s your body, but…’ Mixed messages in childbirth education: Findings from a hospital ethnography. Midwifery, 55, 53–59 

King, P. (2019). The woven self: An auto-ethnography of cultural disruption and connectedness . International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 8(3), 107–123.  

Howitt, D. (2019). Introduction to qualitative research methods in psychology: putting theory into practice. Pearson Education.

Taylor, B. J., & Francis, K. (2013). Qualitative research in the health sciences: methodologies, methods and processes: Routledge.

Taylor, B. J., Kermode, S., & Roberts, K. L. (2006). Research in nursing and health care: creating evidence for practice (Third edition. ed.): Thomson. 

O’Connor, S. J. (2011). Context is everything: The role of auto‐ethnography, reflexivity and self‐critique in establishing the credibility of qualitative research findings. European Journal of Cancer Care, 20(4), 421–423. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2354.2011.01261.x 

Dickson, W. J & Roethlisberger, F. J., (1966) Counseling in an organization: a sequel to the Hawthorne researches. 1898-1974 & Western Electric Company (U.S.) Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, Boston 

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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 ).

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".

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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

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• What Is Ethnography? | Meaning, Guide & Examples

What Is Ethnography? | Meaning, Guide & Examples

Published on 6 May 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 6 April 2023.

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that involves immersing yourself in a particular community or organisation to observe their behaviour and interactions up close. The word ‘ethnography’ also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards.

Ethnography is a flexible research method that allows you to gain a deep understanding of a group’s shared culture, conventions, and social dynamics. However, it also involves some practical and ethical challenges.

Table of contents

What is ethnography used for, different approaches to ethnographic research, gaining access to a community, working with informants, observing the group and taking field notes, writing up an ethnography.

Ethnographic research originated in the field of anthropology, and it often involved an anthropologist living with an isolated tribal community for an extended period of time in order to understand their culture.

This type of research could sometimes last for years. For example, Colin M. Turnbull lived with the Mbuti people for three years in order to write the classic ethnography The Forest People .

Today, ethnography is a common approach in various social science fields, not just anthropology. It is used not only to study distant or unfamiliar cultures, but also to study specific communities within the researcher’s own society.

For example, ethnographic research (sometimes called participant observation ) has been used to investigate football fans , call centre workers , and police officers .

Advantages of ethnography

The main advantage of ethnography is that it gives the researcher direct access to the culture and practices of a group. It is a useful approach for learning first-hand about the behavior and interactions of people within a particular context.

By becoming immersed in a social environment, you may have access to more authentic information and spontaneously observe dynamics that you could not have found out about simply by asking.

Ethnography is also an open and flexible method. Rather than aiming to verify a general theory or test a hypothesis , it aims to offer a rich narrative account of a specific culture, allowing you to explore many different aspects of the group and setting.

Disadvantages of ethnography

Ethnography is a time-consuming method. In order to embed yourself in the setting and gather enough observations to build up a representative picture, you can expect to spend at least a few weeks, but more likely several months. This long-term immersion can be challenging, and requires careful planning.

Ethnographic research can run the risk of observer bias . Writing an ethnography involves subjective interpretation, and it can be difficult to maintain the necessary distance to analyse a group that you are embedded in.

There are often also ethical considerations to take into account: for example, about how your role is disclosed to members of the group, or about observing and reporting sensitive information.

Should you use ethnography in your research?

If you’re a student who wants to use ethnographic research in your thesis or dissertation , it’s worth asking yourself whether it’s the right approach:

• Could the information you need be collected in another way (e.g., a survey , interviews)?
• How difficult will it be to gain access to the community you want to study?
• How exactly will you conduct your research, and over what timespan?
• What ethical issues might arise?

If you do decide to do ethnography, it’s generally best to choose a relatively small and easily accessible group, to ensure that the research is feasible within a limited time frame.

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There are a few key distinctions in ethnography which help to inform the researcher’s approach: open vs closed settings, overt vs covert ethnography, and active vs passive observation. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Open vs closed settings

The setting of your ethnography – the environment in which you will observe your chosen community in action – may be open or closed.

An open or public setting is one with no formal barriers to entry. For example, you might consider a community of people living in a certain neighbourhood, or the fans of a particular football team.

• Gaining initial access to open groups is not too difficult …
• … but it may be harder to become immersed in a less clearly defined group.

A closed or private setting is harder to access. This may be for example a business, a school, or a cult.

• A closed group’s boundaries are clearly defined and the ethnographer can become fully immersed in the setting …
• … but gaining access is tougher; the ethnographer may have to negotiate their way in or acquire some role in the organisation.

Overt vs covert ethnography

Most ethnography is overt . In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.

• Overt ethnography is typically preferred for ethical reasons, as participants can provide informed consent …
• … but people may behave differently with the awareness that they are being studied.

Sometimes ethnography can be covert . This means that the researcher does not tell participants about their research, and comes up with some other pretence for being there.

• Covert ethnography allows access to environments where the group would not welcome a researcher …
• … but hiding the researcher’s role can be considered deceptive and thus unethical.

Active vs passive observation

Different levels of immersion in the community may be appropriate in different contexts. The ethnographer may be a more active or passive participant depending on the demands of their research and the nature of the setting.

An active role involves trying to fully integrate, carrying out tasks and participating in activities like any other member of the community.

• Active participation may encourage the group to feel more comfortable with the ethnographer’s presence …
• … but runs the risk of disrupting the regular functioning of the community.

A passive role is one in which the ethnographer stands back from the activities of others, behaving as a more distant observer and not involving themselves in the community’s activities.

• Passive observation allows more space for careful observation and note-taking …
• … but group members may behave unnaturally due to feeling they are being observed by an outsider.

While ethnographers usually have a preference, they also have to be flexible about their level of participation. For example, access to the community might depend upon engaging in certain activities, or there might be certain practices in which outsiders cannot participate.

An important consideration for ethnographers is the question of access. The difficulty of gaining access to the setting of a particular ethnography varies greatly:

• To gain access to the fans of a particular sports team, you might start by simply attending the team’s games and speaking with the fans.
• To access the employees of a particular business, you might contact the management and ask for permission to perform a study there.
• Alternatively, you might perform a covert ethnography of a community or organisation you are already personally involved in or employed by.

Flexibility is important here too: where it’s impossible to access the desired setting, the ethnographer must consider alternatives that could provide comparable information.

For example, if you had the idea of observing the staff within a particular finance company but could not get permission, you might look into other companies of the same kind as alternatives. Ethnography is a sensitive research method, and it may take multiple attempts to find a feasible approach.

All ethnographies involve the use of informants . These are people involved in the group in question who function as the researcher’s primary points of contact, facilitating access and assisting their understanding of the group.

This might be someone in a high position at an organisation allowing you access to their employees, or a member of a community sponsoring your entry into that community and giving advice on how to fit in.

However,  i f you come to rely too much on a single informant, you may be influenced by their perspective on the community, which might be unrepresentative of the group as a whole.

In addition, an informant may not provide the kind of spontaneous information which is most useful to ethnographers, instead trying to show what they believe you want to see. For this reason, it’s good to have a variety of contacts within the group.

The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside. Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives.

Field notes record any and all important data: phenomena observed, conversations had, preliminary analysis. For example, if you’re researching how service staff interact with customers, you should write down anything you notice about these interactions – body language, phrases used repeatedly, differences and similarities between staff, customer reactions.

Don’t be afraid to also note down things you notice that fall outside the pre-formulated scope of your research; anything may prove relevant, and it’s better to have extra notes you might discard later than to end up with missing data.

Field notes should be as detailed and clear as possible. It’s important to take time to go over your notes, expand on them with further detail, and keep them organised (including information such as dates and locations).

After observations are concluded, there’s still the task of writing them up into an ethnography. This entails going through the field notes and formulating a convincing account of the behaviours and dynamics observed.

The structure of an ethnography

An ethnography can take many different forms: It may be an article, a thesis, or an entire book, for example.

Ethnographies often do not follow the standard structure of a scientific paper, though like most academic texts, they should have an introduction and conclusion. For example, this paper begins by describing the historical background of the research, then focuses on various themes in turn before concluding.

An ethnography may still use a more traditional structure, however, especially when used in combination with other research methods. For example, this paper follows the standard structure for empirical research: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion.

The content of an ethnography

The goal of a written ethnography is to provide a rich, authoritative account of the social setting in which you were embedded – to convince the reader that your observations and interpretations are representative of reality.

Ethnography tends to take a less impersonal approach than other research methods. Due to the embedded nature of the work, an ethnography often necessarily involves discussion of your personal experiences and feelings during the research.

Ethnography is not limited to making observations; it also attempts to explain the phenomena observed in a structured, narrative way. For this, you may draw on theory, but also on your direct experience and intuitions, which may well contradict the assumptions that you brought into the research.

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Ethnographic Research -Types, Methods and Guide

Table of Contents

Ethnographic Research

Definition:

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method used to study and document the culture, behaviors, beliefs, and social interactions of a particular group of people. It involves direct observation and participation in the daily life and activities of the group being studied, often for an extended period of time.

Ethnographic Study

An ethnographic study is a research method that involves the detailed and systematic study of a particular group, culture, or community. Ethnographic studies seek to understand the beliefs, values, behaviors, and social dynamics of a group through direct observation and participation in their daily life.

Ethnographic Research vs Ethnographic Study

here’s a table comparing ethnographic study and ethnographic research:

While there are some differences between the two, they are similar in that they both use qualitative research methods to study a particular group, culture, or community. The main difference is that an ethnographic study involves the researcher spending an extended period of time within the community being studied in order to develop a deep understanding, while ethnographic research is focused on documenting and analyzing the culture, beliefs, behaviors, and social interactions of the group being studied.

Ethnographic Research Types

Ethnographic research can be divided into several types based on the focus of the study and the research objectives. Here are some common types of ethnographic research:

Classic Ethnography

This type of ethnographic research involves an extended period of observation and interaction with a particular community or group. The researcher aims to understand the community’s culture, beliefs, practices, and social structure by immersing themselves in the community’s daily life.

Autoethnography

Autoethnography involves the researcher using their own personal experiences to gain insights into a particular community or culture. The researcher may use personal narratives, diaries, or other forms of self-reflection to explore the ways in which their own experiences relate to the culture being studied.

Participatory Action Research

Participatory action research involves the researcher working collaboratively with members of a particular community or group to identify and address social issues affecting the community. The researcher aims to empower community members to take an active role in the research process and to use the findings to effect positive change.

Virtual Ethnography

Virtual ethnography involves the use of online or digital media to study a particular community or culture. The researcher may use social media, online forums, or other digital platforms to observe and interact with the group being studied.

Critical Ethnography

Critical ethnography aims to expose power imbalances and social inequalities within a particular community or culture. The researcher may use their observations to critique dominant cultural narratives or to identify opportunities for social change.

Ethnographic Research Methods

Some common ethnographic research methods include:

Participant Observation

This involves the researcher directly observing and participating in the daily life and activities of the group being studied. This technique helps the researcher gain an in-depth understanding of the group’s behavior, culture, and social dynamics.

Ethnographic researchers use interviews to gather information about the group’s beliefs, values, and practices. Interviews may be formal or informal and can be conducted one-on-one or in group settings.

Surveys can be used to collect data on specific topics, such as attitudes towards a particular issue or behavior patterns. Ethnographic researchers may use surveys as a way to gather quantitative data in addition to qualitative data.

Document Analysis

This involves analyzing written or visual documents produced by the group being studied, such as newspapers, photographs, or social media posts. Document analysis can provide insight into the group’s values, beliefs, and practices.

Field Notes

Ethnographic researchers keep detailed field notes of their observations and interactions with the group being studied. These notes help the researcher organize their thoughts and observations and can be used to analyze the data collected.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are group interviews that allow the researcher to gather information from multiple people at once. This technique can be useful for exploring shared beliefs or experiences within the group being studied.

Ethnographic Research Data Analysis Methods

Ethnographic research data analysis methods involve analyzing qualitative data collected from observations, interviews, and other sources in order to identify patterns, themes, and insights related to the research question.

Here are some common data analysis methods used in ethnographic research:

Content Analysis

This involves systematically coding and categorizing the data collected from field notes, interviews, and other sources. The researcher identifies recurring themes, patterns, and categories in the data and assigns codes or labels to each one.

Narrative Analysis

This involves analyzing the stories and narratives collected from participants in order to understand how they construct and make sense of their experiences. The researcher looks for common themes, plot structures, and rhetorical strategies used by participants.

Discourse Analysis

This involves analyzing the language and communication practices of the group being studied in order to understand how they construct and reproduce social norms and cultural meanings. The researcher looks for patterns in the use of language, including metaphors, idioms, and other linguistic devices.

Comparative Analysis

This involves comparing data collected from different groups or communities in order to identify similarities and differences in their cultures, behaviors, and social structures. The researcher may use this analysis to generate hypotheses about why these differences exist and what factors may be contributing to them.

Grounded Theory

This involves developing a theoretical framework based on the data collected during the research process. The researcher identifies patterns and themes in the data and uses these to develop a theory that explains the social phenomena being studied.

How to Conduct Ethnographic Research

To conduct ethnographic research, follow these general steps:

• Choose a Research Question: Identify a research question that you want to explore. It should be focused and specific, but also open-ended to allow for flexibility and exploration.
• Select a research site: Choose a site or group that is relevant to your research question. This could be a workplace, a community, a social movement, or any other social setting where you can observe and interact with people.
• Obtain ethical clearance: Obtain ethical clearance from your institution or organization before beginning your research. This involves ensuring that your research is conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and that the privacy and confidentiality of participants are protected.
• Conduct observations: Observe the people in your research site and take detailed notes. This involves being present and engaged in the social setting, participating in activities, and taking note of the behaviors, interactions, and social norms that you observe.
• Conduct interviews : Conduct interviews with people in the research site to gain deeper insights into their experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. This could involve structured or semi-structured interviews, focus groups, or other forms of data collection.
• Analyze data: Analyze the data that you have collected, looking for themes and patterns that emerge. This involves immersing yourself in the data and interpreting it within the social and cultural context of the research site.
• Write up findings: Write up your findings in a clear and concise manner, using quotes and examples to illustrate your key points. This may involve creating narratives, tables, or other visual representations of your findings.
• Reflect on your process: Reflect on your process and methods, thinking about what worked well and what could be improved for future research.

When to Use Ethnographic Research

Here are some situations where ethnographic research may be particularly appropriate:

• When exploring a new topic: Ethnographic research can be useful when exploring a topic that has not been well-studied before. By engaging with members of a particular group or community, researchers can gain insights into their experiences and perspectives that may not be visible from other research methods.
• When studying cultural practices: Ethnographic research is particularly useful when studying cultural practices and beliefs. By immersing themselves in the cultural context being studied, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which cultural practices are enacted, maintained, and transmitted.
• When studying complex social phenomena: Ethnographic research can be useful when studying complex social phenomena that cannot be easily understood through quantitative methods. By observing social interactions and behaviors, researchers can gain insights into the ways in which social norms and structures are created and maintained.
• When studying marginalized communities: Ethnographic research can be particularly useful when studying marginalized communities, as it allows researchers to give voice to members of these communities and understand their experiences and perspectives.

Overall, ethnographic research can be a useful research approach when the goal is to gain a deep understanding of a particular group or community and their cultural practices, beliefs, and experiences. It is a flexible and adaptable research method that can be used in a variety of research contexts.

Applications of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research has many applications across a wide range of fields and disciplines. Some of the key applications of ethnographic research include:

• Informing policy and practice: Ethnographic research can provide valuable insights into the experiences and perspectives of marginalized or underrepresented groups, which can inform policy and practice in fields such as health care, education, and social services.
• Developing theories and concepts: Ethnographic research can contribute to the development of theories and concepts in social and cultural anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines, by providing detailed and nuanced accounts of social and cultural phenomena.
• Improving product design and marketing: Ethnographic research can be used to understand consumer behavior and preferences, which can inform the design and marketing of products and services.
• Studying workplace culture: Ethnographic research can provide insights into the norms, values, and practices of organizations, which can inform efforts to improve workplace culture and employee satisfaction.
• Examining social movements: Ethnographic research can be used to study the practices, beliefs, and experiences of social movements, which can inform efforts to understand and address social and political issues.
• Studying healthcare practices: Ethnographic research can provide insights into healthcare practices and patient experiences, which can inform efforts to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.

Examples of Ethnographic Research

Here are some real-time examples of ethnographic research:

• Anthropological study of a remote indigenous tribe: Anthropologists often use ethnographic research to study remote indigenous tribes and gain insights into their culture, beliefs, and practices. For example, an anthropologist may live with a tribe for an extended period of time, observing and participating in their daily activities, and conducting interviews with members of the community.
• Study of workplace culture: Ethnographic research can be useful in studying workplace culture and understanding the dynamics of the organization. For example, an ethnographer may observe and interview employees in a particular department or team to gain insights into their work practices, communication styles, and social dynamics.
• Study of consumer behavior: Ethnographic research can be useful in studying consumer behavior and understanding how people interact with products and services. For example, an ethnographer may observe and interview consumers as they use a particular product, such as a new smartphone or fitness tracker, to gain insights into their behaviors and preferences.
• Study of health care practices: Ethnographic research can be useful in studying health care practices and understanding how patients and providers interact within the health care system. For example, an ethnographer may observe and interview patients and providers in a hospital or clinic to gain insights into their experiences and perspectives.
• Study of social movements: Ethnographic research can be useful in studying social movements and understanding how they emerge and evolve over time. For example, an ethnographer may observe and interview participants in a protest movement to gain insights into their motivations and strategies.

Purpose of Ethnographic Research

The purpose of ethnographic research is to provide an in-depth understanding of a particular group or community, including their cultural practices, beliefs, and experiences. This research approach is particularly useful when the research question is exploratory and the goal is to generate new insights and understandings. Ethnographic research seeks to understand the experiences, perspectives, and behaviors of the participants in their natural setting, without imposing the researcher’s own biases or preconceptions.

Ethnographic research can be used to study a wide range of topics, including social movements, workplace culture, consumer behavior, and health care practices, among others. The researcher aims to understand the social and cultural context of the group or community being studied, and to generate new insights and understandings that can inform future research, policy, and practice.

Overall, the purpose of ethnographic research is to gain a deep understanding of a particular group or community, with the goal of generating new insights and understandings that can inform future research, policy, and practice. Ethnographic research can be a valuable research approach in many different contexts, particularly when the goal is to gain a rich, contextualized understanding of social and cultural phenomena.

Advantages of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research has several advantages that make it a valuable research approach in many different fields. Here are some of the advantages of ethnographic research:

• Provides in-depth and detailed information: Ethnographic research involves direct observation of the group or community being studied, which allows researchers to gain a detailed and in-depth understanding of their beliefs, practices, and experiences. This type of information cannot be obtained through other research methods.
• Offers a unique perspective: Ethnographic research allows researchers to see the world from the perspective of the group or community being studied. This can provide unique insights into the ways in which different cultural practices and beliefs are constructed and maintained.
• Promotes cultural understanding: Ethnographic research can help to promote cultural understanding and reduce stereotypes by providing a more nuanced and accurate picture of different cultures and communities.
• Allows for flexibility: Ethnographic research is a flexible research approach that can be adapted to fit different research contexts and questions. Researchers can adjust their methods based on the needs of the group being studied and the research goals.
• Generates rich and diverse data: Ethnographic research generates rich and diverse data through a combination of observation, interviews, and other methods. This allows researchers to analyze different aspects of the group or community being studied and identify patterns and themes in the data.
• Supports theory development: Ethnographic research can support theory development by providing empirical data that can be used to test and refine theoretical frameworks.

Limitations of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research has several limitations that researchers should consider when selecting this research approach. Here are some of the limitations of ethnographic research:

• Limited generalizability: Ethnographic research typically involves studying a small and specific group or community, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other contexts or populations.
• Time-consuming: Ethnographic research is a time-consuming process that requires a significant investment of time and resources. Researchers must spend time observing and interacting with the group being studied, which may not be feasible in all research contexts.
• Subjectivity: Ethnographic research relies on the researcher’s interpretation and analysis of the data collected, which may introduce subjective bias into the research findings.
• Limited control: Ethnographic research involves studying a group or community in their natural setting, which limits the researcher’s control over the research context and the behavior of the participants.
• Ethical concerns: Ethnographic research can raise ethical concerns, particularly when studying marginalized or vulnerable populations. Researchers must be careful to ensure that they do not harm or exploit the participants in the research process.
• Limited quantitative data: Ethnographic research typically generates qualitative data, which may limit the types of analysis that can be conducted and the types of conclusions that can be drawn.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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A Less Known But Powerful Helping Hand In Product Design: Ethnographic Research

Dóra Farkas

Don’t listen to your users is one of the ground rules of usability. “What people say , what people do , and what people say they do are entirely different things.” says Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist. We keep this statement in mind while carrying out user research during product development. We don’t listen to them - but what do we do instead? 

If I tell you that one amazing solution to this is to include ethnographic research in your product design process, you will be a bit surprised and it might bring up a few questions for you. For instance: what is ethnographic research? What is the use of ethnography in product development? To be honest, at first, ethnography sounds quite academic… But trust me, it’s a lot of fun! To prove this to you, I talked to David Travis , director of Userfocus about the importance of ethnographic research in product development. 

In this article, I share David’s tips and thoughts with you in my words: we are giving you a great summary of a method that can help you see through the eyes of your users!

What is ethnographic research? 

Ethnographic research is a method that originates from anthropology. It studies and represents a culture. As user-centered design has gained ground over the years, ethnographic research methods have started to be used more and more in product development. One of the great benefits of ethnographic research is that it’s conducted in a real-life environment . Because of that, it lets us peek behind the curtain. Studying our users in real-life scenarios uncovers issues that even the best-designed laboratory experiments can not present, which gives us a huge advantage.  

Ethnographic research is diverse, just as its major focus: culture . It has lots of names: field research , site visits, contextual inquiry, to mention a few. In a broader sense, it’s more like a mindset that helps the researcher understand the user group and its motivations and pain points better through observation . 

“It’s more ethnography-lite than true ethnography.” – David Travis

Let’s get practical 

Now, all that above sounds very interesting, but how do we apply it in product design? In the following, let me tell you about the tips and tricks I heard from David Travis. 

“The whole field of ethnographic research in user-centered design is misknown in some ways.” – David Travis

Open your mind (to): The paradigm shift

Ethnography in the field of anthropology means that the researcher spends weeks, months, even years with the studied group. While in product design we don’t have time for that. Things are going much faster in our processes: researchers spend a maximum of an hour with the users. Additionally, depending on the deadlines of the projects, oftentimes researchers don’t have the possibility to include a significant number of participants in their studies. 

The question of representativeness: quantitative & qualitative methods 

“You can gather as much quantitative data as you like, but that’s not going to help you work out how you need to change your product. In order to work out how you should change your product in terms of design, you need the kind of insights that you get from qualitative research.” – David Travis

When it comes to research, data gathered from quantitative methods is very good at telling us what is happening in an interaction of our product and our users. But they don’t tell us why it is happening. If you see that a certain issue is occurring, but you don’t know the whys, it’s more difficult to decide what kind of design changes you should make so that your product will perform better. To avoid this situation and to test both the whats and whys , we use a mixed-method approach. 

The two most misunderstood facts about qualitative research methods

To be able to make a shift in our thinking about qualitative methods and confidently include them in our product research to get those whys answered, it’s necessary to clear up some misconceptions. 

1.) “To be able to deliver useful results, we need a representative sample.”

“Representative samples don’t play nicely with agile.” – says David Travis in his eye-opening article . Setting a fixed amount of participants for research requires that we have our research problem and our solution to it defined upfront. Yet, in software development we rely on iterations so we need to be flexible and be able to change directions quickly based on research insights. The same flexibility should be given to researchers too in terms of setting and developing hypotheses and the research sample — which gives no room to work with a representative sample.

2.) “Qualitative research lacks generalizability.”

Ethnographic research design how-to: 6 steps to analyze the insights we get from an ethnographic study

Now that we understood the importance of qualitative research in product design, let’s plan how to conduct an ethnographic study!

0.) As preparation for carrying out your research, you have to set up your team. If you have a chance, work with a cross-functional team . The professional diversity helps to get even more fruitful results out of our observations – more eyes see more and different eyes see things differently. After setting up your team, get yourself ready to be exposed to users, and go out to the field!

1.) Only talk to a handful of people first. You want to make sure to thoroughly analyze the insights and you also want to give space for changes and new directions as the research hypothesis emerge through the analysis.

2.) Have ethnographic notes and transcripts of sessions about what people said about their experiences. 

Then follow the steps of the affinity diagram technique:

3.) Stick the nuggets of information on post-its . 

4.) Have the post-its with the insights on a whiteboard and develop them with the team. Look for patterns and insights related to each other, group those together.

5.) Prioritize which insight is more important or less important for the product at that current stage. Prioritization is crucial to keep up with the fast-changing pace of product development teams. Focus on the top three or four, and make sure that they’re addressed.

6.) Iterate the product. Then do more research. Then come back and iterate again.

The added value of ethnographic research

There are two aspects of what added value ethnographic methods bring to your product team.

1.) It helps the product team develop empathy towards the user group they’re designing for. This is a specific kind of empathy. Not the one that helps you to understand the pain of others, but which gives you the ability to see things from their perspective . Additionally, you will be able to understand why users do the things they do, but for this to happen you have to make a shift in your mindset. Always start with the following sentence:  “If I was that user, in that context, I’d probably do it like this way or that way…”   This mindset will help you to really stick to the users’ needs. If you were looking at it from a developer’s point of view, you’d probably do things differently. So, if you can understand why users behave the way they do, you can gain a level of empathy that is very useful in delivering the needed insights into product development.

2.) Product teams will stop seeing users as a homogeneous group. Many teams get zero exposure to users they’re designing for. You can avoid this and get a deeper and more profound understanding of user needs by spending time with them in their context. This way members of the team will see them as individuals and will be able to appreciate the diversity of the perspectives of the members of the user group. It is also possible that the team will enjoy realizing the fact that there are different users with different goals and different environments – which gives ground to develop new, creative solutions.

The challenges of ethnographic research

Hopefully by this time you feel the urge to include ethnographic research in your product design processes, however, remember that there are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Ethnographic research on its own has its limitations: sample sizes are small and unique in most cases. 
• Researchers don’t have a hypothesis while creating a research plan and starting user research. The hypothesis emerges as they do the research. This can be a challenge in a lean environment, where teams have a focus on hypothesis testing. (The way to deal with this is to use mixed-method approaches.)
• Researchers have to be comfortable with talking to people, have an open mind to accept different ways of seeing things. Don’t just collect data, but really see through the eyes of the users. 

How do we do it at UX studio? 

Read about our experience with conducting ethnographic studies in my researcher colleague, Bence’s article on how he validated a football app in a real-life scenario. 

If you want to start with ethnographic research, here is my nr. 1 tip for you:  Go get those notebooks, and go out to the field! Catch your users in a real-life environment to learn about all their secrets of how they’re using your product – all those that they won’t tell you in a user test.

Have an open mind and be prepared to be amazed by the powerful experience that the diversity of people and different cultures can give you.

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Should you want to improve the design and performance of your digital product, message us to book a consultation with us. We will walk you through our design processes and suggest the next steps!  

Our experts would be happy to assist with the UX strategy, product and user research, UX/UI design, etc.

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Ethnography study  is a research method used in social sciences. It involves studying people in their natural environment. Researchers observe and interact with a group over a period of time to understand behaviors, and social interactions. The research can involve interviews, surveys, and direct observation. Your goal is to gain a deep understanding of how the group lives and sees the world.

If you’re here, you probably know that researchers should rely on ethnographic study to obtain accurate results. Indeed, as a qualitative research, it offers a far more realistic representation of human interactions than any other method. 

On the other hand, if you don’t know the tricks of ethnographic methodology, you are more likely to fall into the trap. It’s like throwing darts blindfolded. So, our paper writers have prepared this guide and ethnography examples to make sure that you never fail.

What Is Ethnography Research: Definition

Before we discuss the writing process, let’s first sort things out and define ethnography. Ethnography is a qualitative type of study where researchers examine a specific community in its natural environment through direct observation. In a nutshell, in this type of research you will examine or communicate with people in their local setting.  Ethnographic research method allows participants to feel comfortable while experiencing their authentic culture. Thus, it is perfect for studying things as they are.  The second meaning of “ ethnography ” is a written work that ethnographers complete after studying a community and gathering information about it. Sometimes, it may take years to collect necessary data about some group of people, especially when it comes to a tribe. For example, Claude Lévi-Strauss spent several years in different parts of Brazil before writing his notorious ethnographic work Tristes Tropiques (‘The Sad Tropics’).  Now that you know what ethnographic research is, let’s move on to the goals of study.

What Are The Goals of Ethnography Study?

As long as you are familiar with the ethnography meaning, let us look at this study’s main goals.  The primary purpose of ethnographic research is to get a whole picture about some community by observing how individuals interact in their natural environment. Ethnographers also use this research method to gain insights into culture and traditions of distant tribes. Besides just trying to understand distant and diverse societies, ethnographies also focus on our involvement in different cultures.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethnography

All qualitative research methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, and ethnography is not an exception. While being the only method that offers a hands-on approach to learning the interactions within any social or cultural group, this study is rather time-consuming. It’s important that you consider all pros and cons before selecting this research method.

Ethnographic Research: Main Advantages

Ethnographic research can benefit in many ways. Advantages of ethnography include:

• Direct observation of some community.
• Hands-on experience of any culture.
• Comprehensive picture of any social group .
• Flexibility and wide scope of study.
• Accurate information about local traditions and practices.

So if you are seeking to learn about some community in an empirical way and communicate with the representatives directly, opt for ethnography. 

Ethnographies: Main Disadvantages

Main disadvantages of ethnography are as follows: 

• Long duration of study.
• Potential ethical issues.
• High overall cost and many resources.
• Difficulty to access or build a natural environment.
• Geographical boundaries and geopolitical factors.
• High tendency to bias due to subjectivity.

As you can see, a major disadvantage of ethnography is its time-consuming process. It is not an option if you need the results yesterday. Besides, this method requires thorough preparation and a considerable amount of expenses for a trip that may last years. This creates a high price label that not every novice researcher can afford.

Ethnographic Research Approaches

As a method of anthropology, ethnology has several peculiarities which define a researcher's approach. You will have to choose between such approaches:

• Open or closed setting.
• Overt or covert study.
• Active or passive monitoring.

These techniques depend on the nature of study and the way you want to observe your participants. Let’s look closer at each of these approaches.

Ethnographic Study: Open vs. Closed Settings

The setting of your ethnography research is a location where you observe your subject group. An environment may have some boundaries or no limits at all. In other words, it can be either open or closed.  Intuitively speaking, an open setting is an environment without any borders or restrictions. It’s often called a public setting since you can access it easily. For instance, you may consider a local park or neighborhood because this setting doesn’t restrain you.

• Open setting

Closed settings have restricted access. Generally, such environments are private and can block researchers from studying a social group. To access an open setting an ethnographer should get a special permission. For example, it can be an educational institution, a company or an organization.

• Closed setting

Overt vs. Covert Ethnography Research Methodology

Ethnography research methodology implies particular procedures a researcher chooses in order to study a cultural or social group. Participation in ethnography – overt or covert – plays an essential role in choosing a setting and methods.  Overt ethnography is a research where participants are aware they are being examined. An overt method is considered ethical since the group’s members know the research is taking place and give their consent. To access a community, you need to directly explain your presence and be honest about your intentions.

• Overt ethnography

Covert ethnography is a study where people have no clue they are being observed. Usually, to obtain access to such community, an ethnographer should pretend to be an actual group member. Though a covert method involves deception, it allows to avoid reactivity. The participants behave naturally, so the results will be more accurate.

• Covert ethnography

Active vs. Passive Observation

The results of ethnographies also depend on the level of researcher’s involvement – active or passive. It is a context that defines your level of activity.  During an active observation, you will join the group and experience its culture together with the participants. In this case, people won’t be anxious. However, interference may cause reactivity.

• Active observation

In a passive observation, researchers won’t interfere with the group and its normal functioning. The task is to observe what other people do. This method allows a more meticulous observation since researchers will have time to take notes.

• Passive observation

Now let’s get to the part we know you’ve been eagerly waiting for since the beginning of our article. It’s time to learn how to write ethnographic research.

How to Write an Ethnography Step by Step

Writing an ethnography won’t be a challenge if you follow our step-by-step guide that will keep you on track. From getting access to creating notes and interpreting the dynamics, we’ve got you covered. Here’re 4 clearly defined steps you should go through to ensure that your research time is efficient.

1. Get Access to Group for Your Ethnography

One of the most critical and often challenging things in ethnography is getting access to a group. How an ethnographer should solve this question primarily depends on the setting and the type of sociologist participation (overt or covert). Here’s what should be considered:

Ethnographies are long-term studies. This means you should not only enter the field, but also maintain your access to the community. Therefore, an ethnographer should put extra effort to ensure a constant immersion in the setting, especially if it’s a closed one. Be ready for unexpected changes and try to behave naturally.

2. Find the Informants for Your Ethnographies

Informants are people who understand your ethnography research  and can share valuable insights about the community. They can tell you about group members, places and conditions. As providers of information, they can explain what behavior and activities are acceptable within a target group. Besides, your key respondents can provide you access, interpret the results, or even help you cope with stress.  However, it’s extremely important that you keep in mind 2 things:

• Your findings can be influenced by an informant’s subjective opinion.
• Some responses may be provided to please an ethnographer.

For this reason, you might want to find several respondents. This way, you will gain representative information about the entire population. 

3. Create Field Notes for Your Ethnographic Study

Field notes are detailed records that sum up what a researcher observed, heard or experienced during an ethnographic study. Taking notes of every single event or person can be quite tiresome. That’s why an ethnographer should first identify the main objectives of the study. With clear and good research questions , you will be able to determine what situations are significant and write down notes only when necessary.  Still, sometimes people may interact in the way you don’t expect. It’s a qualitative study so you should be prepared for changes. Don’t get stressed, though. Adjust to the situation and be flexible.

4. Writing an Ethnography

Once you are done, the last step will be writing an ethnographic research report. Ethnographies come in different ‘sizes and shapes’ – you can write an article or even a whole book.  There is no general structure you should follow when creating an ethnography. Some scientific reports just describe background information and briefly summarize the research. Meanwhile, other ethnographies are structured like other types of research. These reports contain an abstract, an introduction, methods, outcomes, discussion and conclusion.  As for the content, ethnographies usually take the form of a narrative. Since you will be sharing your own experiences, opt for a more personal style of writing. And above all, remember that your representation of the group should be convincing. So, you should support your reasoning with evidence.

Ethnographic Research Examples

Here are several ethnography examples that can get you inspired:

• Observing a sports team during the training and actual game.
• Examining how employees work remotely and on site.
• Exploring the behavior of residents in a local park.

Feel free to use these examples to come up with a narrow topic for your study. And here’s an ethnography sample that you use as a guide during research or the writing process.

Final Thoughts on Ethnographies

Let’s wrap this up: ethnography research is a qualitative study where a sociologist observes some group of people in their natural context. Depending on the nature of research, you should plan your strategy and choose a proper approach. If you want to dig deeper into details, make sure you check links scattered through this article. This should give you some valuable insights into the tricks of research and paper writing.

Simplify! Entrust your ethnography to our research paper and thesis writing service and get your work done in no time. Our writers have solid experience and all necessary skills to seriously level-up your academic writing.

Ethnographic Study: Frequently Asked Questions

1. what are the main focuses of ethnographic research.

The main focuses of ethnographic research are observation, understanding, interpretation and representation. You should be a careful observer and pay attention to practices within the group. In addition, you must be able to understand why people act in a certain way and interpret your findings to introduce this community.

2. What is ethnographic research strategy?

An ethnographic research strategy is a study that allows ethnographers to get a realistic picture about any social or cultural group. Typically, researchers use direct observation or personal interviews as methods to study a community.

3. Who uses ethnography?

Ethnography is often used by anthropologists, ethnographers and sociologists. Moreover, ethnographic studies quite often come in handy for marketers, business analysts and geographers.

4. What are the characteristics of ethnography?

The main characteristics of ethnography are: 

• Naturalism: focusing on society in a natural setting.
• Context: access to public or private space.
• Various sources of information: key informants and participants.

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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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Research Methodology & Design

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Selected Videos

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• Qualitative Research and Ethnography [SAGE video] Dr. Marsha Henry discusses ethnography and broader feminist qualitative research. She defines ethnography as embedded and embodied research, then explores the implications of that definition. She also touches on the differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches, and how feminism is challenging long-held assumptions about research.
• What Do You Mean by the Term “Ethnography”? [SAGE video] Dr. Sara Delamont discusses ethnography and ethnographic research. Ethnographic research is done primarily through observation, usually over a long period of time. Delamont examines ethnography through research that she has done, primarily in classrooms.
• Researching Rural Schools Using an Ethnographic Approach [SAGE video] Dr. Sam Hillyard describes her ethnographic research into the idea that schools are at the heart of village communities. She highlights unexpected findings, particularly in how and in where the village has changed. She also brings in concepts of space and agency from human geography.
• Researching Multiracial Identity Using Ethnographic Methods [SAGE video] Dr. Jennifer Jones discusses her ethnographic research into multiracial identity and whether "mixed race" is a simple category or a cohesive identity group. She explains the challenges she faced as well as the importance of theory building throughout the research process.

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What is Ethnographic Research? Definition, Methods, Examples

Appinio Research · 05.01.2024 · 38min read

Ever wondered how researchers immerse themselves in the intricacies of different cultures, communities, and human behaviors to uncover profound insights? In ethnographic research, the quest to understand the richness of human experience takes center stage. This guide will unravel the techniques, challenges, and transformative potential of ethnographic research. From delving into the foundations of this captivating methodology to exploring real-world applications, we'll journey through the captivating world of ethnography, offering you a passport to an in-depth understanding of people, societies, and the intricate tapestry of their lives.

What is Ethnographic Research?

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method that seeks to understand and interpret the social and cultural behaviors, practices, and beliefs of individuals or groups within their natural context. Unlike other research approaches, ethnography emphasizes immersion in the research setting, allowing researchers to observe and interact with participants to gain deep insights into their lives. It is a holistic and participant-focused approach that aims to uncover the underlying meanings and significance of cultural phenomena.

The primary purpose of ethnographic research is to explore and describe the complexities of human behavior, culture, and society. This research method allows researchers to:

• Gain In-Depth Understanding : Ethnography enables researchers to immerse themselves in the lives of participants, gaining a profound understanding of their experiences, perspectives, and worldviews.
• Contextualize Behavior : By observing and interacting with individuals or groups within their natural settings, ethnographers can contextualize behavior and cultural practices, understanding why and how they occur.
• Uncover Hidden Insights : Ethnographic research often uncovers insights that may be hidden from traditional research methods. It sheds light on the nuances, contradictions, and subtleties of human behavior and culture.
• Inform Decision-Making : Findings from ethnographic studies can inform decision-making processes in various fields, such as education, healthcare, marketing, and community development. This research method provides practical insights that can drive positive change.
• Challenge Assumptions : Ethnography challenges preconceived notions and stereotypes, promoting a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of diverse cultures and societies.

Historical Context and Development

Ethnographic research has deep historical roots, dating back to the late 19th century when anthropologists and sociologists began conducting fieldwork among various cultures and societies. Pioneers like Bronisław Malinowski and Franz Boas played instrumental roles in shaping the discipline.

Over the years, ethnographic research has evolved and diversified. While its early focus was primarily on remote and non-Western societies, contemporary ethnographers explore various settings, including urban environments, workplaces, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities.

The development of ethnography has also been influenced by technological advances, allowing for new data collection and analysis methods. Ethnographers now have access to digital tools, audiovisual recording devices, and qualitative analysis software, enhancing the depth and breadth of their research.

Importance of Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research holds immense importance in today's interconnected and multicultural world. Its significance lies in its ability to:

• Bridge Cultural Gaps : Ethnography fosters cross-cultural understanding by enabling researchers to immerse themselves in the lived experiences of others, transcending cultural barriers.
• Inform Policy and Practice : Findings from ethnographic studies inform the development of policies, interventions, and practices that are culturally sensitive and effective.
• Humanize Research : Ethnography humanizes research by focusing on the stories, voices, and perspectives of individuals, making research more relatable and impactful.
• Challenge Stereotypes : It challenges stereotypes and assumptions, promoting a more inclusive and respectful appreciation of diverse cultures and societies.
• Enhance Empathy : Ethnographic research cultivates empathy by encouraging researchers to see the world through the eyes of their participants, fostering a deeper connection and understanding of the human experience.

As we delve deeper into the world of ethnographic research, these foundational concepts, historical context, and the significance of this research method will serve as a solid framework for our exploration of its techniques, applications, and impact.

How to Prepare for Ethnographic Research?

Ethnographic research is a journey of discovery that begins long before you step into the field. Proper preparation is vital to ensure the success of your study. Let's delve into the essential aspects of preparation.

Research Planning and Objectives

Before embarking on your ethnographic research, you must clearly define your research objectives. Ask yourself what you hope to achieve through this study. Are you seeking to gain insights into consumer behavior, understand the dynamics of a particular community, or explore cultural practices within an organization? Your objectives will guide your research design and methodology.

To set effective objectives:

• Start with a clear and concise statement of what you want to learn.
• Ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
• Consider the practical implications of your research and its potential impact on your field or industry.

Selection of Study Population

Choosing the right study population is a critical decision that will shape the trajectory of your ethnographic research. The demographics, location, and characteristics of your participants should align with your research objectives.

• Demographics : Who are the people you want to study? Consider factors such as age, gender, socio-economic status, and cultural background.
• Location : Where will you conduct your research? Is it a specific geographic area, an online community, or a workplace?
• Characteristics : What unique qualities or experiences do your participants possess that are relevant to your study?

Your study population is the lens through which you will observe and understand the world you are researching, so choose wisely.

Data Collection Methods and Tools

Ethnographic research relies on a variety of data collection methods to capture the richness of human experiences and behaviors. Familiarize yourself with these methods and select the ones that best align with your research objectives. Some standard methods include:

• Participant Observation : Immerse yourself in the community or setting you are studying, actively participating and recording your observations.
• In-depth Interviews : Conduct open-ended interviews to gather personal narratives and insights from participants.
• Focus Groups : Bring together a small group of participants to engage in discussions about specific topics, revealing group dynamics and shared beliefs.
• Surveys and Questionnaires : Use structured surveys to collect quantitative data alongside qualitative findings, allowing for broader insights.

Choosing the correct data collection methods and tools is essential for capturing the depth and breadth of your research subject. Each method has its strengths and limitations, so consider a mix of approaches to obtain a comprehensive view.

Ethical Considerations in Ethnographic Research

Ethical integrity is at the core of ethnographic research. As you immerse yourself in the lives and experiences of others, it's essential to uphold ethical principles and protect the well-being and rights of your participants.

• Informed Consent : Obtain informed consent from participants, ensuring they understand the purpose, scope, and potential consequences of the research.
• Anonymity and Confidentiality : Safeguard the identities and sensitive information of participants, using pseudonyms if necessary.
• Respect for Cultural Sensitivity : Be culturally sensitive and aware of potential biases when conducting research in diverse communities or settings.
• Balancing Observation and Intervention : Strive for a balance between observing and intervening, ensuring your presence does not harm or disrupt the environment.

Ethical dilemmas can arise during ethnographic research, and addressing them transparently and responsibly is essential. Seek guidance from ethical review boards or colleagues when faced with complex ethical decisions. Your commitment to ethical conduct will enhance the credibility and impact of your research.

With these essential preparations in place, you are ready to embark on your ethnographic research journey with confidence and purpose.

How to Conduct Ethnographic Research?

Now that you've laid the groundwork in preparation, it's time to delve into the heart of ethnographic research: data collection and analysis. We will explore the various methods used to gather insights into the world you are studying.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is a hallmark of ethnographic research, where you become an active participant in the community or setting you are studying. It involves immersing yourself in the culture and environment, actively engaging with the people and events.

• Engage and Build Rapport : Establish trust and build relationships with the participants. Engage in conversations and activities to gain access to their perspectives.
• Taking Field Notes : Document your observations, experiences, and interactions meticulously. Keep a field journal to record your thoughts, emotions, and key events.
• Participate and Reflect : Actively participate in the community's activities while reflecting on your experiences. Be mindful of your role as an observer and its potential impact on the environment.
• Maintain Objectivity : Strive to maintain objectivity while acknowledging your own biases and perspectives. Balance immersion with the critical distance necessary for analysis.

In-depth Interviews

In-depth interviews provide a window into individual experiences and perspectives. They offer a deeper understanding of specific aspects of your research subject. To conduct effective in-depth interviews:

• Develop Open-ended Questions : Craft questions encouraging participants to share their stories, experiences, and insights. Avoid leading or closed-ended questions.
• Active Listening : Be an active listener, allowing participants to express themselves fully. Show empathy and curiosity to elicit rich responses.
• Establish Trust : Create a comfortable and non-judgmental environment. Assure participants of confidentiality and their right to withdraw from the interview at any time.
• Sampling Diversity : Consider diversity in your interviewee selection to capture a range of perspectives and experiences within the community or setting.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are a valuable method for understanding group dynamics, shared beliefs, and diverse opinions within a community or setting.

• Define Clear Objectives : Specify the goals of the focus group and the topics to be discussed. Ensure participants understand the purpose of the discussion.
• Moderation Skills : Be an effective moderator, guiding the conversation while allowing participants to interact freely. Encourage open dialogue and diverse viewpoints.
• Small and Diverse Groups : Keep focus groups small (typically 6-10 participants) and diverse to stimulate discussions and explore varying perspectives.
• Record and Analyze : Record focus group discussions and transcribe them for analysis. Identify common themes, disagreements, and emerging ideas.

Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires can complement qualitative data with quantitative insights, allowing for a broader understanding of your research subject. To use surveys effectively:

• Design with Clarity : Craft clear and concise questions. Ensure survey items are free from ambiguity and bias. Pilot-test the survey to identify any issues.
• Sampling Strategy : Define your target audience and select a representative sample. Consider using random or stratified sampling techniques to minimize bias.
• Data Analysis : Use statistical tools to analyze survey data. Identify trends, correlations, and patterns that can enhance your qualitative findings.

Data Recording and Analysis

Accurate data recording and thorough analysis are essential to extract meaningful insights from your ethnographic research.

• Organized Data Collection : Maintain well-organized records of your data, including field notes, interview transcripts, and survey responses. Use digital tools to assist with data management.
• Thematic Coding : Employ thematic coding to categorize and organize qualitative data. Identify recurring themes, patterns, and concepts within your data.
• Narrative Analysis : Dive into the narratives and stories within your data. Explore the cultural context and underlying meanings embedded in the narratives.
• Triangulation : Consider using multiple data sources and methods to enhance the credibility and validity of your findings. Triangulation involves cross-referencing information to ensure accuracy.
• Iterative Process : Data analysis is often an iterative process. Continuously revisit your research questions and objectives as you delve deeper into your findings.

In ethnographic research, data collection and analysis are the tools that help you uncover the hidden layers of culture, behavior, and society. Remember that each method has its strengths and limitations, so choose and adapt your approach based on your research goals and the nature of your study population.

Data Analysis in Ethnographic Research

Once you've gathered a wealth of ethnographic data, the next crucial step is to analyze it effectively. Let's examine the various methods and tools used to make sense of the rich qualitative data you've collected.

Thematic Coding

Thematic coding is a systematic approach to organizing and categorizing qualitative data. It helps you identify recurring themes, patterns, and concepts within your data.

• Data Familiarization : Begin by thoroughly familiarizing yourself with your data—this may include field notes, interview transcripts, and survey responses.
• Code Development : Create a set of codes or keywords representing key ideas, concepts, or themes in your data. These codes serve as labels for different aspects of your data.
• Coding Process : Go through your data systematically, assigning relevant codes to specific portions of text or data points. Be consistent in your coding approach.
• Coding Software : Consider using qualitative data analysis software like NVivo or MAXQDA to streamline the coding process and manage large datasets.
• Theme Emergence : As you code, pay attention to emerging themes and patterns. These may be unexpected and can lead to deeper insights.
• Data Reduction : Once coding is complete, summarize and condense the data under each code. This helps in the later stages of analysis.
• Cross-referencing : Cross-reference coded data to see how themes relate to one another. This can reveal complex relationships within your data.

Thematic coding is a powerful tool for identifying the core ideas and concepts that emerge from your ethnographic research. It provides a structured framework for further analysis.

Narrative Analysis

Narrative analysis focuses on the stories and narratives within your ethnographic data. It delves into the cultural context and underlying meanings embedded in the narratives.

• Story Identification : Identify the narratives or stories within your data. Look for personal experiences, anecdotes, and accounts that reveal cultural insights.
• Contextualization : Understand the cultural, social, and historical context in which the narratives are situated. This context provides crucial insights into the meaning of the stories.
• Character Analysis : Analyze the characters within the narratives, their roles, and their relationships. Pay attention to how they shape the narrative.
• Plot and Structure : Examine the narrative structure, including the beginning, middle, and end. Identify any patterns or shifts in the storytelling.
• Themes and Motifs : Identify recurring themes, motifs, or symbols within the narratives. These elements often carry cultural significance.
• Interpretation : Interpret the narratives by considering the cultural norms, values, and ideologies embedded in the stories. Analyze the implications of these narratives for your research.

Narrative analysis allows you to dig deep into the storytelling aspect of your data, uncovering the cultural narratives that shape the experiences and perspectives of your participants.

Comparative Analysis

Comparative analysis involves comparing different cases or groups within your ethnographic study. This method can highlight variations and similarities, shedding light on significant trends.

• Case Selection : Select specific cases or groups within your study that you intend to compare. Ensure these cases are relevant to your research objectives.
• Data Comparison : Compare data from different cases or groups systematically. Look for patterns, differences, and commonalities in their behaviors, experiences, or beliefs.
• Pattern Recognition : Identify recurring patterns and themes that emerge through comparison. These patterns may relate to cultural practices, behaviors, or attitudes.
• Contextual Understanding : Consider the context in which each case or group operates. Understanding the unique context is crucial for accurate interpretation.
• Cross-case Analysis : Conduct a cross-case analysis to draw meaningful conclusions about the overarching themes or trends in your data.

Comparative analysis allows you to gain a broader perspective on your research subject by examining how different contexts or groups influence the phenomena you're studying.

Qualitative Data Software

Qualitative data analysis software is valuable for managing and analyzing ethnographic data, particularly when dealing with large datasets. These software programs, such as NVivo, MAXQDA, and Dedoose, offer several advantages:

• Data Management : Store and organize your data in a structured manner, making it easy to locate and retrieve specific information.
• Efficient Coding : Streamline the coding process by using features that allow you to tag and categorize data quickly.
• Cross-referencing : Easily cross-reference coded data, facilitating in-depth analysis and exploration of relationships.
• Visualization Tools : Create visual representations of your data, such as charts and graphs, to aid in data interpretation and presentation.
• Collaboration : Collaborate with other researchers by sharing your data and analysis within the software platform.
• Project Documentation : Keep track of your research process, coding decisions, and analysis notes within the software, ensuring transparency and reproducibility.

Using qualitative data software can save you time and enhance the rigor of your ethnographic data analysis. It offers a user-friendly interface and various features tailored to the needs of qualitative researchers.

With these tools and techniques at your disposal, you can confidently embark on the journey of data analysis in ethnographic research, unraveling the intricate tapestry of insights hidden within your qualitative data. Remember that the depth of your analysis will determine the richness of the stories you uncover.

How to Report Ethnographic Findings?

Having conducted your ethnographic research and analyzed the data, the next critical step is to communicate your findings effectively. Here are some strategies and techniques for reporting and presenting ethnographic insights.

Writing Ethnographic Research Reports

Writing a well-structured and comprehensive research report is essential for conveying the depth and significance of your ethnographic findings. To craft an impactful ethnographic research report:

• Clear Structure : Begin with an introduction that sets the stage for your research. Provide a clear statement of your objectives and research questions. Outline the structure of your report.
• Detailed Methodology : Describe your research methodology in detail, including data collection methods, participant selection, and ethical considerations. Transparency is key.
• Rich Description : Present your findings using rich descriptions, incorporating quotes, anecdotes, and narratives to illustrate key points. Paint a vivid picture of the cultural and social context.
• Thematic Presentation : Organize your report thematically, presenting key themes and patterns that emerged from your data. Use clear headings and subheadings to guide the reader.
• Interpretation and Analysis : Offer thoughtful interpretation and analysis of the themes, connecting them to your research objectives. Discuss the implications of your findings.
• Visual Aids : Supplement your text with visuals such as photographs, charts, and graphs where appropriate. Visual aids can enhance understanding and engagement.
• Recommendations : Provide practical recommendations or insights that can be applied in relevant fields, whether it's marketing, healthcare, education, or community development.
• Conclusion : Summarize your key findings and their significance. Highlight the contributions of your research and suggest avenues for future studies.
• Citations and References : Ensure proper citation of sources and references. Use a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) throughout your report.
• Appendices : Include any supplementary materials, such as interview transcripts, in an appendix for those who wish to delve deeper into your data.

Writing an ethnographic research report is not just about presenting facts; it's about telling a compelling and informative story that captures the essence of your research subject.

Visual Presentation of Data

In addition to a written report, visual presentation of data can be a powerful way to convey your ethnographic findings. Visuals can make complex information more accessible and engaging.

• Charts and Graphs : Use charts and graphs to illustrate quantitative data or show trends and comparisons. Bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs are commonly used for this purpose.
• Photographs and Images : Include relevant pictures and images that provide visual context to your findings. Ensure proper permissions and ethical considerations for using participant photos.
• Infographics : Create infographics that condense key information into visually appealing and easy-to-understand formats. Infographics can be particularly useful for summarizing complex data.
• Maps : If your research involves geographic elements, use maps to visually represent locations and spatial relationships. Geographic information systems (GIS) can assist in creating informative maps.
• Flowcharts and Diagrams : Utilize flowcharts and diagrams to illustrate processes, workflows, or relationships within your research subject.
• Visual Consistency : Maintain a consistent visual style throughout your presentation to enhance readability and professionalism. Use colors, fonts, and formatting consistently.
• Accessibility : Ensure your visual elements are accessible to all audiences, including those with disabilities. Provide alternative text for images and use accessible design principles.
• Captions and Labels : Include clear captions and labels for all visuals to provide context and explanations.

Visual presentation of data can be a powerful supplement to your ethnographic research report, enabling your audience to grasp the essence of your findings at a glance.

Effective Communication of Ethnographic Insights

Effectively communicating ethnographic insights goes beyond the written report and visual aids. It involves engaging with various stakeholders and tailoring your communication to your target audience.

• Know Your Audience : Understand who will be consuming your research findings. Are they academics, business professionals, community members, or policymakers? Tailor your communication to their needs and interests.
• Engage Stakeholders : Actively engage with stakeholders throughout your research process. Involve them in discussions, share preliminary findings, and gather their input.
• Storytelling : Use the power of storytelling to convey your ethnographic insights. Share compelling anecdotes and narratives that resonate with your audience and illustrate key points.
• Visual Presentations : When presenting your findings in person, consider using visual aids like slideshows or posters. Ensure these visuals complement your spoken narrative.
• Interactive Workshops : Organize workshops or interactive sessions to engage your audience actively. Encourage discussions and collaboration to deepen understanding.
• Plain Language : Avoid jargon and academic language. Use plain language that is accessible to a broader audience. Explain technical terms when necessary.
• Feedback and Q&A : Be open to questions and feedback from your audience . Address their inquiries with clarity and patience.
• Actionable Insights : Highlight actionable insights your audience can use in their respective fields or decision-making processes. Emphasize the practical implications of your research.

Effective communication ensures that your ethnographic insights have a meaningful impact and can drive positive change in the areas to which they apply. It bridges the gap between research and real-world application.

In summary, reporting and presenting ethnographic findings is about translating your in-depth research into formats that are accessible, engaging, and relevant to your intended audience. Whether through written reports, visual elements, or interpersonal communication, the goal is to convey the richness of your ethnographic research in a compelling and informative manner.

Ethnographic Research Applications

Ethnographic research is a versatile and robust method that can be applied across various fields and disciplines. We'll delve into some applications of ethnographic research, shedding light on how it can provide valuable insights in diverse areas.

Marketing and Consumer Behavior Studies

Ethnographic research is pivotal in understanding consumer behavior , preferences, and decision-making processes. By immersing researchers in the consumer's world, it uncovers hidden motivations and contextual factors that drive choices. Here's how ethnographic research is applied in marketing:

• Consumer Insights : Ethnography allows marketers to gain deep insights into the daily lives, habits, and aspirations of their target audience. This understanding helps in tailoring products and marketing strategies.
• Observing Purchase Behaviors : Researchers can observe and analyze how consumers behave in real-life shopping situations . This includes tracking shopping patterns, in-store navigation, and product selections.
• Brand Perception : Ethnography uncovers how consumers perceive and interact with brands . It provides insights into brand loyalty, trust, and the emotional connections that drive consumer choices.
• Product Innovation : Ethnographic research can inspire product innovation by identifying unmet needs and opportunities. By witnessing how products fit into consumers' lives, companies can design solutions that truly resonate.
• Market Segmentation : Ethnographic insights enable the creation of more refined market segments based on actual behaviors and lifestyles rather than demographic data alone.

Healthcare and Medical Anthropology

Ethnographic research is instrumental in healthcare and medical anthropology, offering a holistic understanding of health-related practices, patient experiences, and cultural factors influencing health outcomes.

• Patient-Centered Care : Ethnographic studies explore patient perspectives, beliefs, and healthcare-seeking behaviors. This information helps healthcare providers offer patient-centered care that respects cultural norms and values.
• Cultural Competency : Healthcare professionals and policymakers use ethnographic insights to develop cultural competency, ensuring that healthcare services are sensitive to diverse cultural backgrounds.
• Public Health Interventions : Ethnographic research informs the design and implementation of public health interventions. It identifies barriers to health behavior change and effective strategies for outreach.
• Medical Decision-Making : Understanding how patients and families make medical decisions helps medical professionals communicate effectively and provide tailored care plans.
• Healthcare Disparities : Ethnography uncovers disparities in access to healthcare, highlighting social, economic, and cultural factors that impact health outcomes.

Education and Classroom Observations

In education, ethnographic research provides valuable insights into classroom dynamics, teaching methods, and student experiences. It helps educators and researchers improve educational practices.

• Understanding Learning Environments : Ethnography offers a window into the daily experiences of students and teachers in the classroom. Researchers can observe interactions, teaching styles, and learning challenges.
• Curriculum Development : Insights from ethnographic research can inform curriculum development by tailoring educational content to meet the needs and interests of students.
• Teacher-Student Relationships : Ethnography allows for the exploration of teacher-student relationships, identifying factors that enhance or hinder effective teaching and learning.
• Cultural Awareness : Teachers can benefit from ethnographic studies highlighting cultural diversity within classrooms. This awareness helps create inclusive and culturally sensitive teaching practices.
• Policy and Reform : Ethnographic research provides data that informs education policy and reforms. It helps policymakers understand the realities of classrooms and make evidence-based decisions.

Urban Planning and Community Development

Ethnographic research is vital in urban planning and community development initiatives, offering insights into the dynamics of neighborhoods, communities, and urban spaces.

• Community Engagement : Ethnography involves engaging with community members, listening to their concerns, and involving them in the planning process. This participatory approach fosters community buy-in and empowers residents.
• Understanding Neighborhoods : Researchers use ethnographic methods to understand the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of neighborhoods. This knowledge informs urban development projects and revitalization efforts.
• Public Spaces : Ethnography can shed light on how public spaces are used and experienced by residents. It guides the design of parks, plazas, and other community areas.
• Social Services : Ethnographic research helps identify social service needs within communities, allowing for targeted interventions and support programs.
• Cultural Preservation : In culturally diverse urban areas, ethnography assists in preserving and celebrating cultural traditions, languages, and heritage.

Ethnographic research empowers urban planners and community developers to create more vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable urban environments by considering the perspectives and needs of the people who inhabit them.

Ethnographic Research Examples

To truly grasp the power and potential of ethnographic research, let's delve into some compelling real-world examples where this methodology has been employed to gain profound insights and drive impactful decisions.

Example 1: Enhancing User Experience in a Social Media Platform

Research Focus : Improving the user experience (UX) of a popular social media platform.

Methodology : Ethnographers embedded themselves within the platform's user community. They observed how users interacted with the platform, from posting content to engaging with others. In-depth interviews and surveys were conducted to understand user preferences and pain points.

Findings : The ethnographic study revealed that users valued real-time interaction and visual content. However, they felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Armed with these insights, the platform redesigned its algorithms to prioritize relevant content and introduced features that encouraged more meaningful interactions. As a result, user engagement and satisfaction significantly increased.

Example 2: Transforming Healthcare Delivery in Rural Areas

Research Focus : Improving healthcare delivery in underserved rural communities.

Methodology : Ethnographic researchers spent months immersed in rural healthcare clinics. They observed patient journeys, interactions with healthcare providers, and the challenges faced by both patients and medical staff. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with community members.

Findings : The ethnographic study unveiled barriers such as limited access to transportation and healthcare information, which hindered timely medical care. Armed with these insights, healthcare organizations partnered with local transportation providers and launched educational outreach programs. These interventions led to improved healthcare access and better health outcomes for rural residents.

Example 3: Revitalizing an Urban Neighborhood

Research Focus : Revitalizing a declining urban neighborhood.

Methodology : Ethnographic researchers integrated themselves into the neighborhood's fabric, attending community events, engaging with residents, and documenting their daily lives. They also conducted surveys and interviews to understand the aspirations and concerns of residents.

Findings : The ethnographic study highlighted the importance of community pride and a desire for safer public spaces. With these insights, urban planners and community leaders initiated projects to refurbish parks, enhance street lighting, and promote local cultural events. These efforts not only transformed the neighborhood aesthetically but also fostered a sense of belonging and community cohesion.

These real-world examples demonstrate the versatility and impact of ethnographic research in diverse contexts. From digital platforms to healthcare and urban planning, ethnography uncovers hidden truths, informs strategic decisions, and drives positive change. It's a methodology that celebrates the human experience, one immersive observation at a time.

Ethnographic Research Best Practices

To overcome the challenges and maximize the effectiveness of ethnographic research, researchers can follow best practices that have evolved over time. These practices are instrumental in ensuring the quality and rigor of ethnographic studies.

• Clear Research Objectives : Begin with well-defined research objectives and questions to guide your study.
• Participant Observation : Immerse yourself in the research setting, actively engaging with participants and gaining their trust.
• Triangulation : Use multiple data sources and methods to enhance the reliability and validity of your findings.
• Ethical Considerations : Prioritize ethical conduct, obtain informed consent, and protect the privacy and dignity of participants.
• Continuous Reflexivity : Reflect on your role as a researcher and your potential biases throughout the research process.
• Transparency : Document your research methods, decisions, and any changes made during the study to ensure transparency and replicability.
• Member Checking : Consider involving participants in the research process by sharing findings with them and seeking their input.
• Pilot Testing : Pilot-test your data collection instruments and methods to identify and address potential issues.
• Data Management : Organize and manage your data systematically, using qualitative analysis software if needed.
• Collaboration : Collaborate with colleagues and seek peer feedback to enhance the quality of your research.
• Contextualization : Always place your findings in the broader cultural, social, and historical context to enhance their meaning and significance.
• Interdisciplinary Approach : Consider drawing from other disciplines and approaches to enrich your ethnographic research.

By adhering to these best practices, ethnographic researchers can navigate challenges and ensure the integrity and impact of their studies. Ethnography remains a dynamic and adaptable research method that continues to evolve and adapt to the complexities of the modern world.

Ethnographic Research Challenges and Limitations

While ethnographic research offers invaluable insights, it also presents unique challenges and limitations researchers must navigate. Understanding these challenges is essential to conduct ethnographic research effectively.

• Time-Intensive : Ethnographic research can be time-consuming, requiring extended periods of immersion and data collection. Researchers must commit to long-term fieldwork.
• Resource Demands : Conducting ethnography often demands significant resources, including funding, research assistants, and access to the research site.
• Subjectivity : The researcher's presence and subjectivity can influence the data collected. It's essential to acknowledge and manage biases and maintain objectivity.
• Access and Trust : Gaining access to certain communities or settings may be challenging, and building trust with participants can take time.
• Ethical Dilemmas : Ethnographic research may present ethical dilemmas, especially when observing sensitive or vulnerable populations. Researchers must navigate these ethical complexities.
• Generalizability : Ethnographic findings are often context-specific and may not be easily generalized to broader populations. Researchers must be cautious about overgeneralization.
• Limited Sample Size : Due to the intensive nature of ethnography, sample sizes tend to be small. This limits the statistical power of the research.
• Data Management : Managing and analyzing qualitative data from ethnographic research can be complex, requiring specialized skills and tools.
• Researcher Fatigue : Prolonged fieldwork can lead to researcher fatigue, potentially affecting the quality of data collected.
• Interpretation Challenges : Interpreting ethnographic data can be challenging, as it often involves qualitative analysis that may be open to multiple interpretations.

Conclusion for Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research serves as a powerful compass for exploring human cultures, behaviors, and societies. It enables researchers to step into the shoes of those they study, uncovering hidden stories and perspectives that might otherwise remain concealed. By embracing the principles and best practices outlined in this guide, you too can embark on journeys of discovery, fostering a deeper appreciation for the diverse world we inhabit. Ethnography is not merely a research method; it is a bridge that connects researchers to the lived experiences of others. It empowers us to break down barriers, foster empathy, and drive positive change in a multitude of fields. So, whether you are a student, a professional, or a curious explorer of the human condition, remember that ethnographic research offers a profound lens through which to view and understand the world around us. Embrace the journey, and may your ethnographic endeavors yield meaningful insights and lasting impacts.

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Understanding the Fundamentals of Ethnographic Research Design: With Focus on Key Principles and Best Practices

Ethnographic research design offers a unique and invaluable approach to understanding and interpreting complex social and cultural phenomena. Understanding this research design is crucial for researchers, practitioners, and anyone involved in the study of cultures, societies, and human behavior. A deeper insight of this approach is essential for conducting meaningful and impactful studies in diverse cultural settings. Whether engaged in academic research, community development, or policy formulation, individuals who comprehend the intricacies of ethnography can navigate cultural landscapes with greater depth and sensitivity.

In this blog post, we discuss the fundamentals that form the backbone of ethnography — a qualitative research approach that transcends mere observation. Here we try to develop your understanding about the basics, key components and essential principles that guide the crafting of robust and insightful ethnographic research designs. In this post, we deliberate upon the fundamentals and underlying principles that underpin ethnographic research design. This post mainly covers the following important areas:

When should you use ethnographic research design?

Is the ethnographic research design qualitative or quantitative in nature?

• What are the most commonly used data collection methods in ethnographic research design?

How many participants used to be engaged in ethnographic research?

How long should be an ethnographic research study?

• Who does utilize the ethnographic research?
• What is the common format or structure of an Ethnographic Research Study?

These important topics are discussed here one by one in detail:

Ethnographic research design is particularly valuable when specific conditions or research objectives align with the strengths of this approach. Here are scenarios where using ethnographic research design is highly recommended, illustrated with an example:

• Exploring complex cultural phenomena: When the research goal is to explore complex cultural phenomena, such as rituals, traditions, or social practices, within their natural context you should use ethnographic research design. A researcher interested in understanding the intricate cultural ceremonies of a specific religious community chooses ethnography to participate in and document these ceremonies firsthand, gaining deep insights into their cultural significance.
• Capturing everyday life and behaviors: When the objective is to capture the nuances of everyday life and behaviors within a specific community or setting you should use ethnographic research design. An anthropologist studying the daily routines and social interactions of a nomadic tribe opts for ethnography to live among them, observe daily activities, and document the subtleties of their nomadic lifestyle.
• Contextualizing behavior in specific settings: When a research study aims to understand and contextualize behaviors within specific settings, such as workplaces, schools, or healthcare facilities you should use ethnographic research design. A sociologist investigating communication patterns in a hospital setting chooses ethnography to observe doctor-patient interactions, participate in medical rounds, and understand how communication is influenced by the healthcare context.
• Uncovering unspoken norms and values: When the goal is to uncover unspoken norms, values, and social dynamics that may not be readily apparent through other research methods you should use ethnographic research design. A researcher studying the dynamics of a small community chooses ethnography to engage with residents, observe interactions, and uncover implicit social rules that guide behavior.
• Longitudinal studies of cultural change: When researchers seek to conduct longitudinal studies to capture changes in cultural practices, behaviors, or social structures over an extended period it is advised that you should use ethnographic research design. An ethnographer interested in the impact of globalization on a traditional community opts for long-term engagement to observe changes in lifestyle, values, and social structures over several years.
• Examining subcultures or marginalized groups: When the research focus is on subcultures, marginalized groups, or communities that may be overlooked or misunderstood it is suggested that you should use ethnographic research design. A researcher studying the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth in a conservative community chooses ethnography to gain a deep understanding of their daily challenges, coping mechanisms, and social interactions.
• Evaluating applied interventions: When researchers aim to evaluate the impact of applied interventions, policies, or programs within specific communities, you should use ethnographic research design. A social worker assessing the effectiveness of a community development program opts for ethnographic research to understand how the program influences social dynamics, community relationships, and individual well-being.
• Informing design or innovation processes: When the research goal is to inform design processes, innovations, or improvements in products, services, or systems it is advised that you should use ethnographic research design. A design researcher interested in enhancing the usability of a mobile application chooses ethnography to observe how users interact with the app in their natural environments, providing insights for user-centered design improvements.

In summary, ethnographic research design is best suited when researchers aim to deeply understand cultural phenomena, behaviors, and social dynamics within their natural contexts. It excels in providing rich, qualitative insights that go beyond surface-level observations, making it a powerful method for exploring the complexities of human experience in diverse settings.

Ethnographic research design is primarily qualitative in nature. It focuses on the in-depth exploration and understanding of social phenomena within their natural contexts, emphasizing the richness of qualitative data. Ethnographers employ a range of qualitative research methods, including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and document analysis, to gather detailed and contextually rich information.

Qualitative data in ethnography often includes descriptions, narratives, themes, and interpretations of observed behaviors and cultural practices. The goal is to capture the complexity, depth, and nuances of human experiences, social interactions, and cultural dynamics.

While the emphasis is on qualitative data, it’s important to note that some researchers may complement ethnographic studies with quantitative methods for certain aspects of their research. For example, surveys or structured observations might be used to supplement the qualitative findings. However, the core of ethnographic research design lies in its qualitative approach, allowing researchers to explore and interpret the meanings and patterns inherent in the social and cultural contexts they study.

What are the most commonly used data collection methods in ethnographic research design ?

Ethnographic research design employs a variety of data collection methods to gather rich, contextual, and in-depth information about the culture, behaviors, and social dynamics of a community. Here are some of the most commonly used data collection methods in ethnographic research:

• Participant observation:  Researchers immerse themselves in the natural environment of the community they are studying, actively participating in daily activities and events. For instance, living among a tribal community, a researcher engages in their rituals, ceremonies, and daily routines to gain firsthand insights into their way of life.
• In-depth interviews: Conducting one-on-one interviews with participants to gather detailed information about their experiences, perspectives, and cultural practices. For example, interviewing community members to explore their views on local traditions, social dynamics, and the impact of cultural changes. Collecting personal life stories and narratives from individuals to understand their unique experiences, perspectives, and cultural identity. Conducting life history interviews with elderly community members to capture the changes they’ve witnessed over time and their reflections on cultural shifts.
• Focus groups: Facilitating group discussions with participants to capture collective perspectives, shared experiences, and group dynamics. For instance, bringing together members of a community to discuss community issues, values, and aspirations, revealing shared beliefs and concerns.
• Document analysis: Examining various documents, artifacts, photographs, visual media and cultural materials within the community to extract insights about its history, traditions, and social structures. For instance, analyzing historical records, local newspapers, or community archives to understand the evolution of cultural practices over time.
• Surveys and questionnaires (limited use): Administering structured surveys or questionnaires selectively to gather specific quantitative data on certain aspects of the community. Distributing a survey to gather demographic information or quantitative data related to specific cultural practices within the community.

By employing a combination of these methods, ethnographers can create a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the cultural landscape, social interactions, and lived experiences within the communities they study.

The number of participants in ethnographic research can vary widely based on the nature of the study, the research questions, and the specific goals of the researcher. Unlike quantitative research, where sample size calculations are common, ethnography typically emphasizes depth over breadth. The focus is on understanding the intricate details of a particular group or community rather than generalizing findings to a larger population.

In ethnographic research, researchers often work with a relatively small number of participants, sometimes referred to as informants or key informants. The emphasis is on building close relationships and gaining in-depth insights into the lives, behaviors, and cultural practices of the participants.

The actual number of participants can depend on factors such as:

• Study Scope: The scope of the research, including the size and complexity of the community or culture being studied.
• Research Goals: The specific research questions and objectives of the study.
• Researcher Resources: The time, budget, and human resources available to the researcher.
• Nature of the Community: Some studies may involve tight-knit communities where a smaller number of participants provide a rich understanding, while others may involve larger and more diverse populations.
• Saturation: In ethnography, researchers often continue data collection until they reach a point of data saturation. Saturation occurs when new data ceases to provide substantially different insights or information, indicating that a sufficient understanding has been achieved.

It’s important to note that there is no fixed or standard number of participants in ethnographic research, and the emphasis is on the quality and depth of the data collected rather than the quantity of participants. Researchers often prioritize spending significant time with each participant to build rapport, observe behaviors, and gain a holistic understanding of the community or culture under study.

The length of an ethnographic research study can vary widely based on factors such as the scope of the research, the complexity of the cultural context, and the depth of the analysis. Unlike some quantitative studies that may have specific guidelines for word count or page limits, ethnographic research often prioritizes depth over brevity. Therefore, the length of an ethnographic study is typically determined by the richness of the data collected and the complexity of the cultural phenomena under investigation. Here are some considerations:

• Doctoral dissertations: Ethnographic research conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation often involves extensive fieldwork and in-depth analysis. In such cases, the length can range from 200 to 400 pages or more, including chapters on introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, discussion, and conclusion.
• Academic articles: Ethnographic studies published in academic journals may be more concise. Article lengths can vary but are often in the range of 8,000 to 12,000 words, depending on the journal’s guidelines.
• Book-length ethnographies: Some ethnographers choose to publish their research as a book. In this case, the length can vary significantly, with books ranging from 150 to 500 pages or more.
• Fieldwork duration: The length of time spent in the field also influences the length of the ethnographic study. Longer periods of fieldwork may result in more extensive data collection and, consequently, a more substantial study.
• Research goals and complexity: The complexity of the research questions and the cultural context under study can influence the length of the study. Some ethnographic projects may focus on a narrow aspect of a culture, while others may aim for a more comprehensive exploration.
• Writing style: The writing style and level of detail in the analysis can also contribute to the overall length of the study. Ethnographers often provide rich descriptions, narratives, and quotes to convey the depth of their understanding.

While there are no strict rules regarding the length of an ethnographic study, it’s essential to balance thoroughness with clarity. A well-structured and well-written ethnographic study should provide enough detail to support the research findings and contribute meaningfully to the scholarly conversation without being overly verbose. Researchers should adhere to the guidelines or expectations of the intended publication venue or academic program when determining the appropriate length of their ethnographic research.

Who does utilize ethnographic research?

Ethnographic research is utilized by a diverse range of professionals, researchers, and practitioners across various disciplines. Here are some key groups of individuals and fields that commonly utilize ethnographic research:

• Anthropologists: Ethnography is deeply rooted in anthropology, and anthropologists are often at the forefront of employing ethnographic research. They use this methodology to study cultures, societies, and communities, providing insights into human behavior, social structures, and cultural practices.
• Sociologists: Sociologists use ethnographic research to examine social phenomena, communities, and group dynamics. This approach helps them understand how individuals and groups interact within specific social contexts.
• Education researchers: Ethnography is applied in educational research to study classrooms, schools, and educational systems. Researchers use ethnographic methods to explore teaching practices, student experiences, and the cultural aspects of learning environments.
• Health researchers: Ethnographic research is employed in the field of health to investigate healthcare practices, patient experiences, and cultural factors influencing health behaviors. This can include studies on healthcare delivery, patient-provider interactions, and community health practices.
• Business and marketing professionals: Ethnography is increasingly used in business and marketing to understand consumer behavior, preferences, and cultural influences on purchasing decisions. Companies may employ ethnographers to conduct market research and inform product development.
• Urban planners and architects: Ethnography is applied in urban planning and architecture to understand how communities interact with their built environment. This includes studying the use of public spaces, neighborhood dynamics, and the cultural aspects of urban development.
• Nonprofit Organizations: Organizations working in community development, social justice, and humanitarian efforts may use ethnographic research to understand the needs and challenges of the communities they serve. This information informs the design and implementation of programs and interventions.
• Government agencies: Government agencies may utilize ethnographic research to inform policy decisions, particularly those related to community development, healthcare, education, and social services.

These examples illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of ethnographic research, highlighting its applicability in diverse fields where a deep understanding of human behavior, culture, and social dynamics is essential.

What is the common format or structure of an ethnographic research study?

The structure of an ethnographic research study can vary based on the specific goals, context, and preferences of the researcher. However, there are common elements that are typically included in an ethnographic research report or paper. Below is a general structure that researchers often follow:

• Introduction:
• Introduce the research problem or question.
• Provide background information on the cultural context or community under study.
• Clearly state the objectives and purpose of the ethnographic study.
• Define key terms and concepts.
• Provide an overview of the cultural context or community under study.
• Introduce the significance and relevance of the research topic.
• Explain why ethnography is chosen as the appropriate methodology for the study.
• Justify how it aligns with the research goals and the nature of the research questions.
• Review relevant literature on the research topic.
• Identify key theories, concepts, and debates in the field.
• Highlight gaps in existing knowledge that the ethnographic study aims to address.
• Explain how the study contributes to or extends existing scholarship.
• Summarize existing literature related to the research topic.
• Discuss the theoretical perspective or framework guiding the study.
• Explain the chosen theoretical approach and its relevance to the research questions.
• Explain how the chosen theory informs the research questions and data analysis.
• Describe the overall research design, including the choice of ethnography as the methodology.
• Detail the specific data collection methods employed (e.g., participant observation, interviews, focus groups, etc.).
• Discuss the rationale for selecting these methods.
• Outline the procedures for gaining access to the community and participants.
• Address ethical considerations and the steps taken to ensure participant confidentiality and informed consent.
• Provide information about the participants, including demographics and any relevant characteristics.
• Discuss the sampling strategy employed and why it is appropriate for the research.
• Highlight any relevant characteristics influencing the study.
• Describe the data analysis methods used, emphasizing the qualitative nature of the analysis.
• Explain how themes or patterns were identified and interpreted.
• Discuss the rigor and trustworthiness of the analysis process (e.g., inter-rater reliability, member checking).
• Present the main findings of the study, organized around key themes or research questions.
• Use quotes, anecdotes, or examples from the field to illustrate the findings.
• Provide rich, detailed descriptions of cultural practices, behaviors, and interactions.

          8 . Discussion:

• Interpret the findings in the context of the research questions and objectives.
• Compare and contrast the results with existing literature.
• Explore the implications of the findings for theory, practice, or policy.
• Acknowledge limitations and address potential biases.
• Consider avenues for future research.

        9 . Conclusion:

• Summarize the main contributions and insights of the study.
• Revisit the research objectives and highlight the key takeaways.
• Offer a thoughtful conclusion that ties together the various elements of the study.

      10 . References:

• List all sources cited in the study, following a consistent citation style.

    11. Appendices:

• Include any additional materials that support or supplement the main text (e.g., interview guides, consent forms).

This structure provides a general guideline, but researchers may adapt it based on the specifics of their study and the requirements of the intended audience or publication venue. It provides you with a framework for presenting key components of your study which can be adapted based on requirements of your audience or institutional formalities.

Ethnography, with its emphasis on immersive experiences and participant perspectives, stands as a gateway to a profound understanding of cultural phenomena. Armed with the fundamentals, researchers are empowered to navigate the diverse landscapes of humanity, contributing nuanced insights that enrich both academic scholarship and real-world practices. In embracing the fundamentals of ethnographic research design, we concluded this discussion by bridging the gap between researcher and subject to paint a more authentic portrait of our shared human experience.

Dr Syed Hafeez Ahmad

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