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ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
Overview
Ethnography is a form of research focusing on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of sociocultural phenomena. Typically, the ethnographer focuses on a community (not necessarily geographic, considering also work, leisure, and other communities), selecting informants who are known to have an overview of the activities of the community. Such informants are asked to identify other informants representative of the community, using chain sampling to obtain a saturation of informants in all empirical areas of investigation. Informants are interviewed multiple times, using information from previous informants to elicit clarification and deeper responses upon re-interview. This process is intended to reveal common cultural understandings related to the phenomena under study. These subjective but collective understandings on a subject (ex., stratification) are often interpreted to be more significant than objective data (ex., income differentials). It should be noted that ethnography may be approached from the point of view of art and cultural preservation, and as a descriptive rather than analytic endeavor. The comments here, however, focus on social science analytic aspects. In this focus, ethnography is a branch of cultural anthropology. Related information is contained in the Statistical Associates "blue book" volume on case study research.
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Below is the unformatted table of contents.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH Table of Contents Key Concepts and Terms 5 The ethnographic method 5 Definition 5 Types of ethnographic method 6 The research environment 7 Immersion 7 Situational reduction 8 Theory 8 Symbols 9 Cultural patterning 9 Tacit knowledge 10 Assumptions 11 Frequently Asked Questions 12 Isn't ethnography a subjective rather than scientific social science research method? 12 What are the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)? 12 Bibliography 14 Pagecount: 17
