Strengths and Weaknesses of Ethnographic Research - Coursework Example

Strengths and weaknesses of ethnographic research The term “ethnography” refers to social research, which involves the observation of people’s daily behavior, collection of information through close observation and an unstructured approach of collecting data from a considerably broad range. During the mid 19th century anthropology became an important discipline in academics. Initially the sailors, explorers and colonial administrators to extract information from local population adopted the questionnaire method. By the end of the century, the ethnologists traveled to distant lands in order to carry out surveys. They gradually increased the tenure of engagement in these locations and the twentieth century saw the rise of long-term fieldwork with participant observation. According to Whyte, “ When the researcher is living for an extended period in the community he is studying, his personal life is inextricably mixed with his research. A real explanation of how the research was one necessarily involves a rather personal account of how the researcher lived during the period of his study. This account of living in the community may help also to explain the process of analysis of the data… the actual evolution of research ideas does not take place in accord with the formal statements we read on research methods. The ideas grow in part out of our immersion in the data and out of the whole process of living.” (1955, 279) While the above excerpt explains the process of ethnographic research, it also implies some underlying strengths as well as weaknesses of the process. The most evident and likely of all the risks is the idea of ‘going native’ and this would depend on the degree of involvement of the ethnographer with the surroundings. (Schutt, 2006 307) The following points show some strengths of ethnographic research: Ethnography helps in developing a user interface where the most important goal is to look at the system from the user’s viewpoint. This method helps in satisfying the needs of the end-user. Thus this method helps in a strong and effective assessment of the unspoken needs of the user. An ethnographer is supposed to accomplish all the tasks and understand all the relationships that integrate to form the job of the user. There is more scope and opportunity for an extensive research since it requires an unstructured form of data collection. The user can carry out his job and communicate even outside the official instructions or job description. Sometimes when the real end user is not accessible, the ethnographer, owing to the high degree of understanding required in fieldwork, can act like the end-user within the participatory framework and this is an added advantage to the entire process. Ethnography in theoretical form is supposed to be unbiased in nature and also unassuming. This expands the scope of the research and might lead to unexpected and useful results during the research process. Some of the weaknesses of ethnographic research may be explained as follows: The three principles of ethnographic research are naturalism, discovery and understanding. These principles are often responsible for the failure to grasp the true nature of human social behavior. The research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, depend a lot on the study of what people say other than what they actually do. One has to rely solely on observation and treat them as the products of social and psychological factors in a mechanical manner. This somewhat limits the scope of ethnographic research. (Hammersley, 1990) The time duration is a major constraint as the ethnographer is separated from all other works and often from his family while he resides in the field of work. The results are directly proportional to the time invested. The ethnographer needs to analyze and reconstruct the cultural scenes and groups and it is not just a case study. Hence this will take up adequate time and involvement. (Spradley and McCurdy, 1972) Ethnographic studies usually involve small number of participants and a small-scale environment. (Hughes et al., 1995) This facilitates communication and involvement and also makes the process cost efficient. However, a larger scale would bring about more accuracy but will lead to certain disadvantages. The field methods combined with individual abilities and situational variation makes the fieldwork a personal experience whose meaningfulness and validity rely on the skill, discipline and perspective of the individual ethnographer. Here lies both the strength and weakness of the method as it depends entirely on the characteristics of the person involved. The ethical issues of ethnographic research The three fundamental aspects to be studies by an ethnographer are: what people do, what people know and what people make and use. Cultural behavior, knowledge and artifacts need to be handled with care. The ethnographer needs to understand the meaning of the actions and events involving the people. This often leads to misleading interpretation when some aspects are assumed, taken for granted or communicated indirectly through words and action. (Spradley, 1980, 5) The following are the ethical issues involved in qualitative research methods: Care needs to be taken such that the researchers do not end up harming the participants of the survey or the respondents in the field. The ethnographer has to explain to the people the purpose of the research. People’s behavior has to be examined under everyday context rather than any experimental basis. (Hammersley, 1990) Disciplined scrutinization, a creative insight, extensive analysis and interpretation are required in order to produce a complete result in ethnographic analysis. During the analysis, which considers words, tone, context, non-verbals, internal consistency, intensity and the individual responses, it is important to apply data reduction strategies (Krueger, 1994). The ethnographer should take care not to reveal the names of the participants in cases where there would be a possibility of the participants being harmed. The researcher must be aware of what he or she needs to report about a culture and what would be ethical to convey to the public. The essential core of the activity aims to understand another way of life from the native point of view. (Spradley, 1979, 3) The presence of abundant information often creates a problem, as the ethnographer needs to sort them out and exclude some parts in order to fit a particular design or pattern of the data structure during analysis. A large variety of materials, which are interrelated, need to be organized properly. Often, an ethnographer needs to translate the words of the interviewee. In such a case the ethnographer might be tempted to use the impact of his own culture and personal experience while interpreting the collected information about the field concerned. This might hinder the truth from being revealed. The researcher needs to be careful such that he is not influenced by the participant and not biased while giving the report. Qualitative methods will require the inclusion of a lot of description of the research process and the people’s experiences involved. (Moll & Greenberg, 1990) The study is supposed to explain to the reader what exactly happened around us and what were under our observation. Also these things need to be revealed from the point of view of the participants. Now what will be included in the information relies quite a lot on the questions that the researcher would choose or prefer to answer. The content of the report on the qualitative study depends on the information needs of the primary stakeholders as well as the major objective of research. In order to prepare a comprehensive report one needs to avoid inclusion of some portion of data acquired by the researcher. It is essential to center on a focal point in the paper. An analyst who would attempt at including everything shall make the readers go through some unnecessary details. Again this may amount to the agony of omitting on the part of the researcher, which in turn will be dependent on the pain in reading through irrelevant details. There has to be a balance between both the aspects and this has to be done ethically. The researcher often needs to decide about how much description to include. This has to be balanced by analysis and also interpretation. Direct quotations also require being included. However names are to be kept a secret if revelation is harmful for the respondent. The main aim of the analysis is to arrange the descriptive part in a way such that the description is manageable. Again the analysis should be sufficient in order to convey the main points to the reader. The focus should be always kept in mind while writing the report. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the interviewee and providing a framework for the participant to answer or respond is the key to ethnography especially in case of qualitative research. (Patton, 1987) In the recent past there has been an up rise of multi-sited ethnography as well as the inclusion of media studies, cultural studies, science and technology. The ethics of a research study ultimately centers mainly on due regard towards the participants and the end user. Ethnographic interview Interviewing Spencer was a nice and comfortable experience. He is an easygoing man with some interesting traits apart from his professional ones. One aspect that really helped me in this case was the common language while communicating. We chose the common medium as English and communication barrier was almost zero. He seemed to read what as behind my mind while asking the questions and hence I did not have to do much of the talking. The interesting interview revealed the following three major themes. Theme 1: Love for people and interaction: Ethnographic research is often concerned with the problem of communication. It reminded me of hermeneutics. It is the Latin version of the Greek term hermeneutice and served as a common language during the 17th century. It was Plato who used this term frequently in his dialogues while interpreting religious intuition. However Gadammer and Dilthey have credited Augustine, the great thinker with the influence on the modern day Hermeneutics. He had established the universality of hermeneutics. “The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions. As a theory of interpretation, the hermeneutic tradition stretches all the way back to ancient Greek philosophy. In the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hermeneutics emerges as a crucial branch of Biblical studies. Later on, it comes to include the study of ancient and classic cultures…. Now hermeneutics is not only about symbolic communication. Its area is even more fundamental: that of human life and existence as such.” (Hermeneutics, 2005) This concept of a common language is very crucial and significant in the study of social sciences where socializing is an integral part. The producer I as talking to loved interaction and communication with different people especially friends. He says he has to work in teams and hence just like my job, communication and language problem is very significant. However he manages it well and shares a good relation. He is close to his family and friends. He also regrets sometimes that he is burnt out and is left with little time while facing the challenge. However he is pleased with the end results as he ends up representing the people fairly. He also wishes that if he had time he would perhaps go for a girlfriend. This again shows his love for social life. He feared that a girl who would enter his life might prevent him from making the TV programs. Therefore he is single. Theme 2: passion for creativity, for instance writing Spencer expresses his passion for writing and that if he was not a producer he would like to be a writer where he would not have to provide too much time and yet do something creative. That would also leave him time to enjoy his life and even have a girlfriend. He also shows his wisdom as he says that our financial commitments are often constrained by the amount of money we have. So one could not however blame it totally on the current work status. After all it was ultimately all in his hands. The idea is how to stop the wheel and get off. He also admits that he enjoys his current work when the end results are good, he finds so much success, and money coming in. then there is no regret. Here he reveals his financial commitments and fears associated with that. This will prevent him from doing what he wants to do. It is rightly said that “There is nothing so grand in all the world as watching a person who loves hat he does do it” (Gini, 2006, 27) Thus he describes how the materialistic life has perhaps taken away the leisure time and scope of enjoyment but has given him money and sufficient reward to be happy. Theme 3: love for mushroom During the interview he expresses his love for mushrooms and describes what it is like, how it tastes and so on. This shows how the producer, despite his busy life has a simple soul that wants to be free and enjoy the small pleasures of life while doing things of his liking. He also seemed to like eating mushroom apart from other food like cheese and drink also. Despite the busy schedule he finds time to pick mushrooms and cook them. Small pleasures can save one’s life. (Haran, 2007) The author writes how the small pleasures of life an make it worth living and exciting. My interviewee seems to be managing it well by nurturing his love for mushrooms. References 1. Fetterman, (1998). Ethnography, 2nd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 2. Haran, M. (2007), Froth on the Cappuccino: How Small Pleasures Can Save Your Life, United States: Hay House Inc. 3. Gini, A. (2006), The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations, London: Taylor and Francis. 4. Hammersley, M. (1990). Reading Ethnographic Research: A Critical Guide. London: Longman 5. “Hermeneutics” (2005), Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/ [accessed on February 20 2008] 6. Hughes, J., King, V., Rodden, T., and Anderson, H. "The role of ethnography in interactive systems design." Interactions, 2, 2, 1995: pp. 56-65.  http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/210000/205358/p56-hughes.pdf 7. Krueger, A. R. (1994). Focus Groups: A Practical guide for Applied Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 8. Massey, Alexander. "The Way We Do Things Around Here: The Culture of Ethnography." Website. http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/2961/waywedo.htm. 1998 9. Moll, L.C. & Greenberg, J.M. (1990). Creating Zones of Possibilities: Combining Social Constructs for Instruction. In: L.C. Moll (ed.) Vygotsky and Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press 10. Patton, M.Q. (1987). How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation. Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications. 11. Schutt, R.K. (2006) Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research, Pine Forge Press, 307 12. Spradley, J.P. and McCurdy, D. (1972) the cultural experience: ethnography in complex society, Chicago: science research associates. 13. Spradley, J. (1980). Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 14. Spradley, J. (1979). The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 15. Whyte, W.F. (1955), Street Corner Society, Chicago: Univerity of Chicago Press. Read More