ETHNOGRAPHIC AND OBSERVATIONAL METHODS

Question 1

ETHNOGRAPHY IN HEALTH

Answer 1

Classic ethnography involved long term participation in an unfamiliar setting: advantages are depth (‘thick description’); understanding of health and complexity: health is understood in context. However, disadvantages are time and resources.

Debate about utility of ‘rapid ethnographic methods’: can we elicit useful information using a ‘tool box’ of techniques without long term in depth fieldwork?

Question 2

METHODOLOGY

Answer 2

What is ‘Fieldwork’? What to observe: acts, activities, meanings, participation, relationships, settings (Lofland 1971)

Producing ‘thick description’ - empirical description, and analysis: emic and etic accounts

Question 3

THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER

Answer 3

Levels of participation: how far is the researcher observing social life, and how far are they are participating in it to use their own experiences as the major way of generating data?

Being and insider and outsider: and learning from the interplay

Overt and covert roles: issues of ethics and methodology; case study of Rosenhan’s study of psychiatric hospitals (Rosenhan, D. 1973 ‘On being sane in insane places’. Science 179: 250-8), a classic of ‘pseudo patient studies’.