ARM - week 5

Question 1

what is ethnography?

Answer 1

the study of social interactions, behaviors and perceptions that occur within groups, teams, organizations and communities.

Question 2

what is the aim of ethnography

Answer 2

The central aim of ethnography is to provide rich, holistic insights into people’s views and actions, as well as the nature of the location they inhabit.

Question 3

how does ethnography works?

Answer 3

Ethnographic research enables the researcher to immerse themselves into the field that they are studying. Ethnographic research gives researchers an emic perspective → to get inside how people live, how people carry out their daily routines and to find out what people think is meaningful and why. Ethnographic research is also suitable to identify hidden insights.

Ethnographic research is done by carefully observing people and participating in the lives of these people. The data of ethnographic research consists of observations, interviews, document analyses and fieldnotes.

Ethnographic studies zoom in on (daily) practices, in order to understand these in context. Ethnographic research focuses on describing subjective realities and the understanding of that reality from the perspective of the person who undergoes it. This understanding cannot be achieved at a distance → practices must be ‘lived’ by the researcher.

Question 4

ethnography in summary

Answer 4

• Practice based
• Emic perspective (insider perspective)
• Understanding (not explaining)
• Immersion
• Observations and fieldnotes
• Interviews (formal and conversational) and document analysis

Question 5

Observational dimensions in ethnography

Answer 5

1. space
2. actor
3. activity
4. object
5. act
6. event
7. time
8. goal
9. feeling

Question 6

space

Answer 6

physical layout of the place(s)

Question 7

actor

Answer 7

range of people involved

Question 8

activity

Answer 8

a set of related activities that occur

Question 9

object

Answer 9

the physical things that are present

Question 10

act

Answer 10

single actions people undertake

Question 11

event

Answer 11

activities that people carry out

Question 12

time

Answer 12

the sequencing of events that occur

Question 13

goal

Answer 13

things that people are trying to accomplish

Question 14

feeling

Answer 14

emotions felt and expressed

Question 15

organizational ethnography

Answer 15

Ethnographers consider organizations as cultures. In order to understand organizations, you need to address and understand their culture and how people give meaning to their organization and act within their organization. The emphasis is on understanding the material and social environment of an organization by talking to people, by participating in the organization and by observing practices within the organization.

Ethnography is a research method, but it’s also a sensibility and mode of attention → it’s a way of seeing things by looking at the daily practices, the details and the live worlds of the participants.

Question 16

organizational ethnography in healthcare

Answer 16

Care can be viewed as organized practices → there are multiple actors involved (human actors, care technologies, materialities). The way these different actors are organized and the way the different actors interact with each other can be studied through ethnographic methods. Ethnography also calls for more bottom-up and critical perspectives on care (and cure) → it draws attention to how actual care is done and it opens up different views/perspectives on care by looking at the mundane, ordinary and small interactions. Ethnography therefore has an important role in the empowerment of minority voices.

Question 17

difference between inductive and deductive

Answer 17

deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. The main difference between inductive and deductive reasoning is that inductive reasoning aims at developing a theory, while deductive reasoning aims at testing an existing theory. Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broad generalizations and deductive reasoning moves from broad generalizations to specific observations.

Deductive research, often seen in quantitative research, begins with identifying expected hypotheses, which are derived from existing academic theory. These claims are then tested as true or false in research. Inductive research, often seen in qualitative research, is used to find patterns and is used to make sense of practices from the inside. Inductive research starts with exploring the empirical data of the study. This exploration of the data evolves in particular themes, after which you try to move from the data to theory and knowledge. An important critique on deductive research is that with theoretically informed hypotheses, you only focus on the information that tests the claims as true or false, but you can miss other important aspects and findings.

Question 18

abduction

Answer 18

abduction uses both the inductive and the deductive methods

Question 19

sensitizing concepts

Answer 19

these concepts are general concepts that have not yet been developed or concepts that have only been briefly developed. The sensitizing concepts enable researchers to focus their observations. It makes researchers sensitive to important concepts and phenomena that play a role in answering the research question. It can help researchers decide which observational dimensions to focus on.

Question 20

quality criteria and instruments

Answer 20

1. triangulation; data/ methodological, investor and theory
2. thick description
3. member check
4. reflexivity and audit-trail

Question 21

triangulation

Answer 21

Triangulation means studying objects from different angles

Question 22

data/ methodological triangulation

Answer 22

The use of different sources of data to examine a phenomenon in several different settings and different points in time or space → interviews, observations, documents.

Question 23

investor triangulation

Answer 23

The use of multiple researchers to generate a complex range of perspectives on the data.

Question 24

theory triangulation

Answer 24

The approach of data with different concepts and theories to see how each helps to understand the data.

Question 25

thick description

Answer 25

Thick description means that the investigators have to write down the things they see and make this transparent. They should not only write down the facts, but they should also pay attention to the contextual details and the interpretation of social meaning. Investigators should not just describe a situation, but they should also add rich details so that the readers understand the significant and complex cultural meanings. Thick description enables other researchers to translate the findings to other practices and other fields of study.

Question 26

member check

Answer 26

In member check the ethnographers verify their interpretations with the participants → they check whether the interpretations of an observed practice are recognized by the participants. Member checks can be done through focus groups, workshops and interviews. Member checks also provide the researcher with extra opportunities and extra insights to deepen their understandings of the phenomena that they are studying.

Question 27

reflexivity and audit-trail

Answer 27

This refers to the examination of your own beliefs, judgement and practices as researcher. Researchers reflect upon how their own position could have influenced the research. It involves questioning assumptions, personal positions, professional positions and perspectives. An audit-trail provides a transparent description of the research steps that were taken from the start of the research process to the development and reporting of the findings.  

Question 28

zooming in and zooming out (Nicolini, 2009)

Answer 28

zooming in to foreground certain details of practice zooming out to understand the larger socio-material networks in which these practices are embedded

Question 29

subtle realism (mays and pope)

Answer 29

Epistemic position: there is a social reality out there (independent from the observer) that can be studied and represented Quality of a study is defined in terms of reliability, validity and generalizability Approach reality out there as accurately as possible Specific quality criteria: triangulation (for example observations and interviews, more techniques than just one), fair dealing (talk to different groups instead of one), respondent validation (give it back to respondent and ask if that was what they meant), attention to negative cases (are there things that fall out and do you address them), clear exposition of data collection and analysis (are you honest about how you got your data) as well as reflexivity (what was your own role in the process) Note: importance of neutrality (critical distance) – Green and Thorogood 2008

Question 30

relativism (Rolfe)

Answer 30

Epistemic position: reality is multiple and socially constructed (this also holds for research accounts) Quality of a study is always open to challenge and depends on purpose (e.g. emancipatory; opening-up) Quality criteria: there are no predetermined criteria, appraisal resides in the eyers of the beholder and quality resides in the report itself (instead of the research study). Shifts responsibly to the reader… but what to look for? Ø Reflexivity; theoretical contribution and novelty of claims made; supported by empirical data Note: not neutral (involved) – Green and Thorogood 2008