ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODS

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ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODS

• Celia McMichael
• c.mcmichael_at_latrobe.edu.au

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Ethnographic Research

• What is ethnographic research?
• What is its theoretical foundation?
• When is ethnographic research used?
• Methods for collecting data
• Study populations
• Gritty issues limitations, ethics, rigour,
  reflexivity etc.

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What is Qualitative Research ?

• naturalistic inquiry (not experimental)
• focuses on social phenomena meaning, ideas,
  experience
• inductive analysis
• holistic perspective
• rich data and thick descriptions
• researcher immersed in the field

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Qualitative research

• explores the subjective world. It aims to
  provide an in-depth understanding of peoples
  experiences, behaviours, perspectives and
  histories (and the meanings they ascribe) in the
  context of their personal circumstances or
  settings.

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Ethnography

• Emerged out of anthropological tradition
• It means to write about people or cultures
  from the Greek words ethnos (people) and
  graphei (write)
• It is a methodology for descriptive studies of
  cultures and peoples.

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Ethnographic methods

• Field work is
• the study of people and of their culture in
  their natural habitat. Anthropological fieldwork
  has been characterized by the prolonged residence
  of the investigator, his participation in and
  observation of the society, and his attempt to
  understand the inside view of the native peoples
  (Powdermaker 1969)
• participating and observing

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Ethnographic methods/theory

• draws upon other qualitative methods interviews,
  group discussion, participatory activities etc.
• influenced by other theories, phenomenology,
  feminism, grounded theory, postmodernism . . .

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HISTORY of ETHNOGRAPHY

• Interest in other cultures has long history
  Homers Iliad and Odyssey Islamic empires wrote
  descriptions of foreign people they encountered
  Franciscan Missionaries in Mexico in 16thc.
  Jesuit Missionaries in Canada in 17thc.
• Ethnography (as we know it) emerged in the late
  19th and early 20th centuries
• European and American colonialism led to
  ethnographic fieldwork by government officials,
  administrators, missionaries

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HISTORY OF ETHNOGRAPHY

• Malinowski (Trobriand Islands WW1)
• Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded
  by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close
  to a native village, while the launch or boat
  that has brought you sails away out of sight . .
  . (Argonauts of the Western Pacific 1922).
• Boas and the American Fieldwork tradition
  studied Indigenous people, Northwest Coast
  (1920s)
• Evans-Pritchard
• (fieldwork among the Nuer 1930s/40s)
• Chicago School (1920s/30s)
• First systematic ethnographic community
  studies in urban environments Jewish ghettos,
  dance-halls, professional thieves.
• Emphasised participant observation.

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ETHNOGRAPHY TODAY

• Broad definitions of the field including every
  imaginable human group and context
• Institutional settings
• New religious movements
• Elderly patients in hospices
• Fire fighters
• Drug dealers
• Grey nomads
• Sex workers
• Preparations for extraterrestrial anthropology
  for fieldwork on space stations
• Studies of sensitive issues sexual health,
  VAW, cancer . . .

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Medical Anthropology

• Socio-cultural contexts affect understanding and
  response to health and illness
• Meaning and symbolic dimensions of health and
  illness is constructed
• Social representation of disease (i.e. HIV/AIDS)
• Medical institutions as cultural sites
• Cultural appropriateness of treatments and
  services
• Gendered representations of bodies (particularly
  in relation to reproductive health)
• Byron Good, Arthur Kleinman, Paul Farmer . . .

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Participant Observation

• Learning to see, describe, remember and to become
  aware
• The researcher
• participates in everyday life
• conducts detailed observations of behaviour
  interpersonal communication
• makes direct observations of significant events

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Participant observation

• Spend extended period living in a community,
  learning the language, understanding social life,
  gaining familiarity with customs
• Permission to enter the community may need to be
  negotiated
• The role of the researcher is known to the
  community

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Settings

• Traditional or conventional setting is a village,
  small tribal group or small town
• Contemporary ethnography may be conducted in an
  institution or organisation (laboratory, school,
  hospital), in a town or a dispersed community
• Participant observation may take place in public
  space (e.g. park, streets, restaurant)
• And in private spaces, such as in peoples homes

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What to Observe

• Places and Contexts
• Physical environments
• Objects
• People who, how many, roles . . .
• Activities what, when, recurrent or unique . . .
• Behaviors
• Interactions
• Symbolic meaning of words, non-verbal
  communication

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Visuals can be important in supporting written
textPhoto L.Manderson
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• Q What do you think might be the benefits of
  participant observation?

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Why Observe?

• Collection of different kinds of data
• Reduces the problem of reactivity
• Helps formulate sensible questions
• In-depth emic understanding
• Many research problems cant be addressed any
  other way
• Access to information that is not widely
  available

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Why Observe?

• Allows establishment of good relationships
• Enhances understanding of settings/contexts
• Questions can be asked in appropriate ways and in
  local terminology
• Data triangulation compare accounts, statements
  of ideal behaviours, and observed actions
• Allows questions to be asked on a continuing
  basis

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• Q What do you think might be the limitations of
  participant observation?

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Risks and difficulties

• Community entry may take a long time
• Tensions between groups/individuals may affect
  data collection
• Observation may change the usual behaviour of an
  individual or community
• Research may provoke greater reflection and
  analysis among participants than is usual
• The researcher and host community may find it
  difficult to clarify the role of the researcher
• Observation and participation will always be
  selective and partial you can only be in one
  place at one time

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Risks and difficulties

• It is difficult to generalize on the basis of a
  case study
• The approach cannot be used for large populations
• Participant observation is not designed to
  establish causal relationships
• Susceptible to focus on the abnormal or aberrant
  or exceptional

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The observer in the field . . .

• A researcher or student, not a professional/expert
  
• An outsider, not a member of the community
• Objective without set agendas or promising
  ability to make changes
• Genuinely interested, to encourage engagement and
  involvement

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The observer in the field . . .

• The researchers own attitude, fears and
  anxieties, modes of engagement and
  interpretations form part of the data.

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Kinds of Observation

• Participant observation/observant participation
• New role to study familiar/unfamiliar settings
• Existing role to study familiar/unfamiliar
  settings
• Overt/covert
• Obtrusive/unobtrusive

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Observational Strategies

• Unstructured
• Broadly focused (i.e. infant feeding,
  drug-injecting practices)
• Impressionistic/descriptive
• Structured
• Tighter focus on specific behaviors
• Behaviors/issues of interest must be clearly
  defined

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Structured Observation

• Continuous monitoring observing
  behaviours/issues of interest for extended period
  (several hours, a day)
• Spot checks record presence/absence of
  behaviour/characteristic at point of observation
  (i.e. use of mosquito coils willingness to ask
  questions at drs appointment)
• Rating checks make judgments on individuals and
  environments (i.e. hands are clean when cooking)
• Q WHAT ARE THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THIS
  APPROACH?

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Field Notes

• Field notes
• Continuous recording
• Intermittent recording
• What to record
• Ethnographic description (substantive)
• Analytic perceptions/interprerations
• Visual records photos, maps etc

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Hints for Good Field Notes

• Plan time to write up
• Dont talk about your memories before you write
  them up
• Record as soon as possible
• Remember in historical order
• Note the date, time, location, identities
• Draw maps to remember
• Distinguish between verbatim and summarized
  conversation

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Methodological Problems

• Observing only the unusual
• Fatigue, boredom
• Inadequate recording
• Complex, large or busy settings
• Recall problems if not recorded immediately
• Making assumptions

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ACTIVITY

• Choose a health issue and setting in which to
  study it (using participant observation)
• Discuss the following
• What types of things will you observe?
• How will you keep note of them?
• Specific questions you are seeking to understand
  through observation?
• Themes that you anticipate might stand out
• How observation might help to understand this
  issue?
• How could you strengthen the validity of your
  observation?
• Limitations of observation in understanding the
  issue
• Any other critical reflections on participant
  observation

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Postmodernism and fieldwork

• 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of post-modern
  perspective in cultural anthropology
• Heightened awareness of relationship between
  power and construction of knowledge
• New reflexive trend

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Reflexivity

• Conscious self-examination of the ethnographers
  interpretive role.
• Consideration of the construction of ethnographic
  authority.
• Anthropologist paid closer attention to
  interactional processes through which they
  acquired, shared and transmitted knowledge.
• Rabinow Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
• King Here come the anthros

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Increasing focus on

• Fieldwork at home
• Feminist anthropology
• Indigenous scholars (i.e. subaltern studies, RHRC
  PhD)
• Critique of the fieldwork experience and
  participant observation

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• Q In what ways do you think fieldwork and
  participant observation are problematic as
  research methods?

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• Q Can you think of any strategies to address
  these difficulties?

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Criticisms of fieldwork

• Invasive observation
• People reduced to objects of scientific gaze
• Act of domination of the colonized

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Addressing post-modern concerns around fieldwork

• Increased awareness of multi-vocality
  multiple realities in cultural contexts
• Explicit acknowledgment of ethnographic encounter
• Increased regard for process of analysis and
  representation
• Participatory research planning, research,
  implementation, evaluation etc.
• Applied anthropology
• Active involvement of people in representation
  (i.e. co-authorship)
• Testimonio accounts written by local people,
  such as experience of violence in Guatemala

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And getting on with the job . . . .

• I am weary of these postmodernist critiques,
  and, given the perilous times in which we and our
  subjects live, I am inclined towards compromise,
  the practice of a good enough ethnography.
  While the anthropologist is always a necessarily
  flawed and biased instrument of cultural
  translation, like every other craftsperson we can
  do the best we can with the limited resources we
  have at hand our ability to listen and to
  observe carefully and with empathy and
  compassion (Scheper-Hughes 1995).

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INTERVIEWS

• Informal interview
• Unstructured interview
• Semi-structured using a guide or theme list
• Standardized open-ended interview
• Standardized closed questions

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Different Types of Interviews

• i.e. Thematic focus
• Understanding of specific illness
• Experience of specific illness
• Treatment-seeking
• i.e. Life History and Narrative Interviews
• Patterns of social change and development
• Personal, economic and cultural influences
• Family history, maternity histories and
  reproductive health, patterns of morbidity
  mortality

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What does narration do?

• Thematic organization, narrative structure, and
  emphases highlight what is important to
  participant
• Provides account of historical events
• Meaning ascribed to chronological events (story
  or accurate account?)
• Social structure described through example and
  story

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Strengths of interviews

• Confidential can discuss more private issues
• Obtain controversial points of view
• In-depth life experiences
• Responses can be clarified
• Provides understanding of peoples behaviour,
  beliefs, perceptions
• People generally love the experience

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Weaknesses

• Difficult with topics people dont know much
  about
• Doesn't give a diversity of opinions
• Difficult to do well
• Interviewer effect
• Verbal descriptions may not be reliable account
  of behavior, meaning, feelings (balanced by
  triangulation with observation, narrative
  analysis . . . )

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The Art of a Good Interview

• Give participant a clear account of the aim of
  the interview
• Establish rapport. Be inquisitive.
• Achieve a conversational tone and allow
  flexibility in flow. Dont interrupt.
• Maintain a sense of neutrality and avoid imposing
  own views/ideas
• Provide verbal/non-verbal feedback
• Allow silences, dont suggest answers.
• Be sensitive and non-judgmental

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Constructing a Theme List

• Keep to one page so you can actively engage
  rather than follow detailed guide
• Try to avoid questions
• Allow flexibility to pursue different issues
• Include prompts under main themes
• Collect socio-demographic data on a separate
  sheet

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Pilot theme list

• Ambiguous concepts and ideas can be difficult to
  put simply
• Questions may not elicit the types of information
  you want . . .
• People might be seeking approval rather than
  saying what they actually think . . .
• Pilot testing important

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Wording Questions

• Ask open ended questions that establish topic
  by dont suggest response
• Avoid dichotomous response questions
• Avoid what do you know questions
• Avoid jargon and technical terms
• Use participants own language

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Managing the Interview

• Setting up an interview introductions, location,
  explain purpose, relax into it
• Recording an interview use good quality
  equipment and test before
• Probing elaboration, continuation,
  clarification, attention, completion, evidence
• Wrapping up review main themes, ask if there is
  anything else to discuss . . .

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Probing

• Elaboration more detail can you tell me more
• Continuation keep talking mmmm, yes, go
  on
• Clarification resolve confusion what do you
  mean.
• Attention indicate your interest I see
• Completion encourage completion of story
  thought What happened next
• Evidence how sure a person is of story How
  certain are you . . . Should be used carefully.
• Provide encouragement . . .

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Theory informs interview approach . . .

• Postmodern theory might value situational
  encounter and unstructured interviews. Creative
  interviewing that allow subjects greater voice
• Feminist interview redraws power relationships
  between researcher/researched. Stresses
  narratives and personalised conversation.
  Requires emotional engagement and connection.
  Focus on certain topics

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Transcribing Interviews

• Include all relevant details (sighs, umms, pauses
  etc)
• Time
• 1 hour English speaking 3-6 hrs
• 1 hour non-English speaking 6-9 hrs
• Back-up copies

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Activity

• Construct theme list
• Interview using theme list
• Begin by assuring confidentiality etc
• Take notes
• (Write up notes)
• Reflect on skills were you nervous, did you
  interrupt, how did you respond?
• How might you as an interviewer have distorted
  the responses?

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FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION

• ...The explicit use of the group interaction to
  produce data and insights that would be less
  accessible without the interaction found in a
  group (Morgan 198812)
• . . . primary aim of describing and
  understanding perceptions, interpretations, and
  beliefs in a select population to gain
  understanding of a particular issue from the
  perspective of a groups participants (Khan and
  Manderson 1992)

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What are FGDs?

• A group interview or discussion. Relies on
  interactions and exchange.
• Participants share some characteristics in common
  (gender, ethnicity, age, social class)
• The focus is on a specific topic. In-depth
  discussion

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When Should Focus Groups be Used?

• Exploratory studies
• Assess needs
• Assist to develop interventions
• Test ideas about programs or strategies
• Solve specific health/program problems
• Evaluate programs
• Follow up research results
• In conjunction with other methods

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Size of Focus Groups

• 6 to 12 people in a group
• 4 to 8 people in a group (from experience!)
• Over recruit by 20!
• Moderator/interviewer and note-taker?

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Selecting participants

• Who can best provide the information you want?
• How should participants be selected?
• How many focus groups should be conducted?
• How to contact the participants?
• What do we tell people when we invite them?

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Mens focus group, Hunan, China. Photo Yuan
Liping
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FGDs often work well by using existing social
groups Photo Yuan Liping
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Developing a question guide

• Get to know the community first and find out a
  bit about the issues you want to explore.
• Develop a list of questions you plan to ask
• Who writes the question line?
• Researcher/research team advisory groups
• General principles to writing questions keep
  questions general, brief and simple
• You may need change the question guide several
  times, as each focus group leads you to new
  questions

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Role of the moderator

• A moderator or facilitator needs
• Adequate knowledge of the subject
• Good listening skills
• Ability to establish a comfortable relationship
  with the participants
• Patience and flexibility
• Observation skills watch for "non-verbal"
  messages

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Role of a note-taker

• Focus group discussions are usually taped, then
  transcribed for analysis
• The note-taker keeps a summary of the discussion
  for back up if recording fails and to identify
  who is speaking on the tape.
• The note-taker records non-verbal interactions
  and keeps note of contextual factors
• The note-taker may also identify issues that
  emerge in discussion to be followed up by the
  moderator
• Helps write up notes with the moderator after
  session

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Beginning a group discussion

• Welcome and thank the participants for coming
• Explain the research in a general fashion
• Explain why participants were chosen
• Explain the roles of the moderator/notetaker
• Explain that you will be using a recorder to help
  recall all that is said
• Make sure people understand that
• the session will be confidential

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Running a FGD

• Establish ground rules (i.e. sexual health
  project FGD guide)
• Maintain the flow of conversation
• Start with a question that puts participants at
  ease
• Move from general to specific
• Seek views and opinions, not facts
• Beware of people who dominate
• Draw in shy participants
• Encourage debate

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Concluding a FGD

• Summarize the discussion
• Check that people agree
• Invite people to stay for snacks and informal
  discussion
• Go over findings with note-taker as soon as
  possible after conclusion
• Write up notes as soon as you can

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Strengths

• Elicit a range of opinions
• Elicit conversation around behaviors and beliefs
• Identify inconsistencies and variations that
  exist in a group
• Produce a lot of information quickly
• Excellent in communities where one to one
  interviews are not acceptable
• Relatively simple to conduct
• Generally well accepted

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Limitations

• Participants agree with each others responses
• Facilitator has less control over flow of
  conversation
• Can be expensive and time consuming
• Can be difficult to control who attends a group
  in small communities
• Can be dangerous in politically sensitive
  contexts
• Harder to analyze

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Interactive activities

• Focus groups can be good forums to do more
  interactive activities
• Diamond nine
• Sort piles, ranking
• Stakeholder analysis
• Vignettes
• Community mapping etc.

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Diamond nine
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Diamond nine (MDGs)

• Eradicate poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop global partnership for development
• (Another development issue??? Governance)

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Free-listing, card sorting, ranking . . .

• Free listing like brainstorming an issue
• Write down each topic on a card.
• Ask participants to group the cards into piles
  (or rank most important/least important etc)
• Discuss the results. Why are cards organised as
  they are . . . .?

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Example bushfire safety

• Freelisting generate statements that describe
  things that are important to make households and
  neighbourhoods safer from bushfires
• Pile sorting sort the statements into piles that
  make sense to you.
• Discuss themes for each pile of cards i.e.
  education, preparation, agency/community
  interaction

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Stakeholder analysis

• Ask people to plot stakeholders against two
  variables, for example
• the level of stake in the outcomes of the
  project against resources of the stakeholder.
• importance of the stakeholder against the
  influence of the stakeholder.

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Stakeholder analysis Method

• Make a list of all stakeholders
• Write the name of each stakeholder on a post-it
  note or card
• Rank the stakeholders on a scale of one to five,
  according to one of the criteria on the matrix
  i.e. level of influence
• Then plot the stakeholders against the other
  criteria of the matrix.
• Discuss
• Are there any surprises? Which stakeholders does
  group have the most/least contact with? Where are
  group members placed? Etc.

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Vignettes

• Present a hypothetical or real scenario and ask
  group for their comments.
• What they would do, or how do they imagine the
  person would respond?
• Used for exploring sensitive topics drug
  injecting or HIV risk
• Also used when working with sensitive groups the
  effects of divorce on children

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Pictorial representation of illness

• Representation of the illness may be appropriate
  in some illness, such as MI, where the patient
  can easily visualize the particular part of the
  body affected
• i.e. draw a picture of what you think your heart
  looked like before your heart attack and another
  picture of what you think has happened to your
  heart after your heart attack.

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Focus group exercise

• You have been successful in a consultancy to
  develop improved sexual health services for
  refugee youth. What are the major health problems
  they face and the issues that they regard as
  important?
• Choose a (common) health issue junk food
  advertising, asthma, exercise, PMT . . .
• In small groups
• Develop a short theme list
• Develop interactive activity
• Run a mini focus group (with a different group)

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SAMPLING

• Logic of sampling in qualitative inquiry is
  fundamentally different from that of quantitative
  inquiry
• Goal relates to understanding variable and
  context laden phenomena
• Aim is to select information-rich cases for
  studying in-depth

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SAMPLING

• Purposive Sampling
• Snowball / Network sampling
• Opportunistic sampling
• Theoretical sampling
• Sample size

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UNITS TO BE SAMPLED

• Settings or places
• Events
• People
• Things or artefacts

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Strategies

• Extreme or deviant cases
• Maximum variation sampling
• Typical case sampling
• Homogeneous sampling
• Stratified purposeful sampling
• Critical case sampling

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Key Informants

• Key informants play an important role.
• Chosen because they are articulate and have good
  understanding of issues, can introduce you to
  other people, can assist in interpretation . . .

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Ethics in ethnographic health research

• How is the research problem defined?
• Is the work justified?
• What are the risks/benefits to participants?
  Social, psychological, physical.
• How will participants be selected?
• Will privacy, confidentiality and anonymity be
  assured? How?
• How will informed consent be established?

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Ethics in ethnographic health research

• How can a researcher be involved yet still
  maintain her/his capacity for analytical
  scrutiny?
• Should a researcher conduct an interview in an
  everyday setting, even very informally, if
  consent is not obtained?
• How will study participants be able to control
  the researchers interpretations of their
  experiences?

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Ethics in ethnographic health research

• How will the researcher handle a situation where
  they are asked to take sides?
• How will the researcher manage situations where
  antagonistic views, violence, racism or sexism
  threaten their presence/values?
• How will results be disseminated?

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Ethical Guidelines/Protocol

• AAA (American Anthropological Association)
  Statement on Ethics
• http//www.aaanet.org/stmts/ethstmnt.htm
• Government or institutional guidelines provide a
  basic protocol for ethical issues to be
  considered (i.e. LTU UHEC)

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Ethical Issues in Human Research

• Informed consent (written/verbal)
• Confidentiality
• Sensitivity in research method/process
• Interpretation of data
• Potential risks of research
• Benefits of research
• These often set out in information sheets

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Ethnography and Research Ethics

• Enhanced understanding of research within
  community
• Community involvement in interpreting findings
• Community can generate research questions and
  focus

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ETHICS Sensitive research

• Ethnographic and qualitative research
• Proceed with sensitivity, regardless of the
  subject matter
• Respect privacy
• Respect the participants wish not to disclose
  some information
• Provide a non-judgmental approach
• Ensure effective communication

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