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Ethnographic Techniques
Session 3 Slides
Survey research and ethnography
Comparing approaches
Ethnography
Is Iterative-inductive
Draws on a family of methods
Is direct and sustained
Involves contact in context
Watches, listens, ask questions
Collects data (inc visual)
Produces rich accounts
Comparing approaches
Surveys
Are deductive
Use a single method
Seek generalisations
Reduce complex data
Are standardised
Epistemological issues
Surveys often are founded on positivism
Ethnographies on interpretivism
Positivism
Durkheim?
For a positivist, sociology must emulate the natural sciences
Hypotheses, experiments, observations, facts, generalisations, laws, predictions
Positivists seek facts, derived from observable (and testable) phenomena
Interpretivism
We cannot predict human behaviour.
Individuals think and act, they don’t just react.
Focus is on how social life is produced.
Interpretation is the method.
Weber, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann
Applications and uses
Surveys as the starting point
Aiding sampling
Raising issues
Existing surveys. See
Combining methods
Contributing rich data to existing survey findings
Working together and standardising findings
Interpretation of survey data
Combining methods: Examples
O’Reilly 2004
The Extent and Nature of Integration of European Migrants in Spain
Survey of 340 respondents
50 questions
44 recorded interviews
One year of participant observation
Online Communities
Bowker 2001Understanding Online Communities Through Multiple Methodologies Combined Under a Postmodern Research Endeavour
Chatroom behaviour and identity play
Triangulation
A postmodern approach
No meta narratives
No unifying explanations
‘Alternative approaches to knowledge produce a wider range of explanations from which to understand the world’
Online communities
Bowker combines:
Surveys
Ethnographic methods
Interviews
See Hodson 2001 for survey of ethnographic findings
See Bryman for discussion of combining methods
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