Ethnographic Research

A SYNTHESIS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH BY: MICHAEL GENZUK, PH.D.
University of Southern California Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research

AN ETHNOGRAPHY "When used as a method, ethnography typically refers to fieldwork (alternatively, participant-observation) conducted by a single investigator who 'lives with and lives like' those who are studied, usually for a year or more." -John VanMaanen, 1996. "Ethnography literally means 'a portrait of a people.' An ethnography is a written description of a particular culture - the customs, beliefs, and behavior - based on information collected through fieldwork." --Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson, 2000. "Ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture. The description may be of a small tribal group in an exotic landor a classroom in middle-class suburbia." --David M. Fetterman, 1998.

Ethnography is a social science research method. It relies heavily on up-close, personal experience and possible participation, not just observation, by researchers trained in the art of ethnography. These ethnographers often work in multidisciplinary teams. The ethnographic focal point may include intensive language andculture learning, intensive study of a single field or domain, and a blend of historical, observational, and interview methods. Typical ethnographic research employs three kinds of data collection: interviews, observation, and documents. This in turn produces three kinds of data: quotations, descriptions, and excerpts of documents, resulting in one product: narrative description. This narrative oftenincludes charts, diagrams and additional artifacts that help to tell “the story“ (Hammersley, 1990). Ethnographic methods can give shape to new constructs or paradigms, and new variables, for further empirical testing in the field or through traditional, quantitative social science methods. Ethnography has it roots planted in the fields of anthropology and sociology. Present-day practitionersconduct ethnographies in organizations and communities of all kinds. Ethnographers study schooling, public health, rural and urban development, consumers and consumer goods, any human arena. While particularly suited to exploratory research, ethnography draws on a wide range of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, moving from "learning" to "testing" (Agar, 1996) while research problems,perspectives, and theories emerge and shift.

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Ethnographic methods are a means of tapping local points of view, households and community “funds of knowledge” (Moll & Greenberg, 1990), a means of identifying significant categories of human experience up close and personal. Ethnography enhances and widens top down views and enriches the inquiry process, taps both bottom-up insights andperspectives of powerful policy-makers "at the top," and generates new analytic insights by engaging in interactive, team exploration of often subtle arenas of human difference and similarity. Through such findings ethnographers may inform others of their findings with an attempt to derive, for example, policy decisions or instructional innovations from such an analysis.

VARIATIONS IN OBSERVATIONALMETHODS Observational research is not a single thing. The decision to employ field methods in gathering informational data is only the first step in a decision process that involves a large number of options and possibilities. Making the choice to employ field methods involves a commitment to get close to the subject being observed in its natural setting, to be factual and descriptive in reportingwhat is observed, and to find out the points of view of participants in the domain observed. Once these fundamental commitments have been made, it is necessary to make additional decisions about which particular observational approaches are appropriate for the research situation at hand. VARIATIONS IN OBSERVER INVOLVEMENT: PARTICIPANT OR ONLOOKER? The first and most fundamental distinction among...