Michelle LaFrance is assistant professor and director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at George Mason University. She has published on peer review, preparing students to write across the curriculum, e-portfolios, e-research, writing center and WAC-pedagogy, and institutional ethnography and is the coeditor of Peer Pressure/Peer Power and Student Peer Review and Response.
Interest in how qualitative health research might be used more widely to inform health policy and medical practice is growing. Synthesising findings from individual qualitative studies may be one method but application of conventional systematic review methodology to qualitative research presents significant philosophical and practical challenges. The aim here was to examine the feasibility of synthesising qualitative research using qualitative methodology including a formative evaluation of criteria for assessing the research to be synthesised. Ten qualitative studies of adult patients' perspectives of diabetes were purposefully selected and questions proposed by the critical appraisal skills programme (CASP) adapted and used to assess papers prior to synthesis. Each study was reviewed independently by two experienced social scientists. The level of agreement between reviewers was determined. Three papers were excluded: one because it turned out not to be qualitative research, one because the quality of the empirical work was poor and one because the qualitative findings reported were also recorded in another paper already included. The synthesis, which had two distinct elements, was conducted using the meta-ethnographic method. Firstly, four papers containing typologies of patient responses to diabetes were synthesised. Secondly, six key concepts were identified from all seven papers as being important in enabling a person with diabetes to achieve a balance in their lives and to attain a sense of well-being and control. These included: time and experience, trust in self, a less subservient approach to care providers, strategic non-compliance with medication, effective support from care providers and an acknowledgement that diabetes is serious. None of the studies included in the synthesis referenced any of the early papers nor did they appear to have taken account of or built upon previous findings. This evaluation confirmed that meta-ethnography can lead to a synthesis and extension of qualitative research in a defined field of study. In addition, from it a practical method of qualitative research assessment evolved. This process is promising but requires further testing and evaluation before it could be recommended for more widespread adoption.
ethnography
Most ethnographers today would agree that the term ethnography can be applied to any small scale social research that is carried out in everyday settings; uses several methods; evolves in design throughout the study; and focuses on the meanings of individuals' actions and explanations, rather than their quantification.10 In addition, ethnography is viewed as contextual and reflexive: it emphasises the importance of context in understanding events and meanings and takes into account the effects of the researcher and the research strategy on findings.11 There is also wide agreement that ethnography combines the perspectives of both the researcher and the researched.11
The way in which ethnography is used, however, depends on several factors, including the philosophical stance of the researcher or the practicalities of research funding.12 There is, for example, no overall consensus among ethnographers about the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that underpins an ethnographic account. Instead, different kinds of ethnographies rest on different ideas of what constitutes legitimate knowledge.12 Some ethnographers, for example, use an interpretive approach, drawing on experiential knowledge gained from physical participation in the field,13 knowledge that others might discount as unverifiable.
It might be argued that such an approach represents a narcissistic shift of focus from the experience of the participants in the research to that of the ethnographer,8 yet it offers one response to the crisis of representation in the social sciences. This crisis has arisen partly because of uncertainty about how to describe social reality and partly because of the challenge to traditional assumptions, referred to earlier, about whose voice has authority. Additionally, there is growing acknowledgement that the knowledge generated by an ethnographic approach is strongly shaped by the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the researched.14 This has prompted the development of new forms of ethnography, such as critical ethnography, which attempt to restructure the research process in ways that promote the views of those who are often silent or marginalised.15
Awareness of the diverse positions within ethnographic research is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, many researchers agree that the epistemological foundations of an ethnography should continue to exert a strong influence throughout the entire research process.11Take the example of an ethnography concerned with the implications of physical intimacy in clinical encounters. This study was based on an epistemology that extended legitimacy to knowledge from all the senses, not only sight, which suggested the researcher's participation in, rather than mere observation of, clinical work, to collect experiential data.13 Ethnography is thus not a simple matter of the ad hoc mixing of several methods.
Like all approaches to research, however, ethnography has its limitations. These are amply spelt out elsewhere,10 but some examples that are particularly pertinent to healthcare research are worth raising here.
Funding bodies for research in health services are often not receptive to ethnography on the basis that, as a qualitative methodology, it does not lead to generalisable findings. Some researchers dispute this argument, claiming that qualitative research requires its own criteria for generalisability.22 Others, however, do not consider generalisation to be the purpose of qualitative research and point instead to the in depth understanding that ethnography can achieve and the way it can identify groundbreaking questions or hypotheses that can be further explored through other methodologies.16
The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) is an experimental laboratory that promotes innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography. It uses analog and digital media, installation, and performance, to explore the aesthetics and ontology of the natural and unnatural world. Harnessing perspectives drawn from the arts, the social and natural sciences, and the humanities, SEL encourages attention to the many dimensions of the world, both animate and inanimate, that may only with difficulty, if it all, be rendered with words. The SEL is directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor.
An immersive marvel of sonic ethnography, Expedition Content draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate and Standard Oil heir Michael Rockefeller as part of the so-called Harvard-Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea in 1961 to study the indigenous Hubula (also known as Dani) people. In their nearly imageless film, Karel and Kusumaryati document the strange encounter between the expedition and the Hubula people. The work explores and upends the power dynamics between anthropologist and subject, between image and sound, and turns the whole ethnographic project on its head. New York Times Critic's Pick. Berlinale 2020.
This book provides a contemporary overview of work in critical ethnography that focuses on language and race/ism in education, as well as cutting edge examples of recent critical ethnographic studies addressing these issues. The studies in this book, while centred primarily on the North American context, have wide international significance and interdisciplinary reach and address a range of educational contexts across K-12 education and less formal educational settings. They explore the racialized construction, positioning and experiences of bi/multilingual students, and the implications of this for educational policy, pedagogy and practice. The chapters draw on a range of critical theoretical perspectives, including CRT, LatCrit, Indigenous epistemologies and bilingual education; they also address significant methodological questions that arise when undertaking critical ethnographic work, including the key issues of positionality and critical reflexivity.
Table of contentsWhat is ethnography used for?
Different approaches to ethnographic research
Gaining access to a community
Working with informants
Observing the group and taking field notes
Writing up an ethnography
The main advantage of ethnography is that it gives the researcher direct access to the culture and practices of a group. It is a useful approach for learning first-hand about the behavior and interactions of people within a particular context.
Ethnographic research can run the risk of observer bias. Writing an ethnography involves subjective interpretation, and it can be difficult to maintain the necessary distance to analyze a group that you are embedded in.
Most ethnography is overt. In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.
The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside. Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives.
An ethnography may still use a more traditional structure, however, especially when used in combination with other research methods. For example, this paper follows the standard structure for empirical research: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. 2ff7e9595c
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