Chapter Ten

Question 1

Four Types of Ethnography

Answer 1

Overt Role-Open/Public Setting: Type One-Wilson’s (2002) study of Toronto raves. Totten’s (2001) study of youth gang members (Box 9.6).
Overt Role-Closed Setting: Type Two- Karabanow’s (2002) study of two Canadian youth shelters (Box 9.3).
Covert Role-Open/Public Setting: Type Three- Desroches’s (1990) updates on homosexual activities in public washrooms.
Covert Role-Closed Setting: Type Four- Lauder’s (2003) discussion of covert research on the Heritage Front.

Question 2

“Gatekeepers”

Answer 2

A non-researcher who controls researchers’ access to a research setting.

Question 3

Realist

Answer 3

An epistemological position according to which reality is independent of the sense but is to some degree accessible to the researcher’s tools and theoretical speculations.

Question 4

Reflexive

Answer 4

Terms used to refer to social researchers’ awareness of the implications that their methods, values, biases, decisions, and mere presences in the situations they investigate have for the knowledge they generate.

Question 5

Covert Research

Answer 5

A term frequently used in connection with ethnographic research in which the researcher does not reveal his or her true identity and/or intentions. Such research may violate the ethical principle of informed consent.

Question 6

Field Notes

Answer 6

A detailed ethnographic account of events, conversations, and behaviour, and the researcher’s initial reflections on them.