Module 13 - Ethnography and particpant observation

Question 1

Sensitising concepts

Answer 1

Not definitive concepts that take shape during the research process

Question 2

Overt role

Answer 2

Participants aware of researcher’s intention

Question 3

Covert role

Answer 3

Researcher’s identity not disclosed

Question 4

Closed/non-public setting

Answer 4

Researcher has to gain access to social setting

Question 5

Covert Full Member

Answer 5

Full membership of group but researcher’s status as researcher is unknown

Question 6

Overt Full Member

Answer 6

Full membership of group but researcher’s status as researcher is known

Question 7

Participant Observer

Answer 7

Participates in group’s core activities but not as a full member

Question 8

Partially participating observer

Answer 8

Same as participating observer, but observation is not necessarily the main data source

Question 9

Minimally participating observer

Answer 9

Observes but participates minimally in group’s core activities

Question 10

Non-participating observer

Answer 10

Observer (sometimes minimally) but does not participate in group’s core activities

Question 11

Culture relativism

Answer 11

Each (sub-)culture works in its own way, and beliefs and practices that appear strange from the outside make sense when contextualised within their particular cultural framework

Question 12

Methodological relativism

Answer 12

Ethnographer must set aside [bracket] their own cultural norms in order to understand another culture and explain its worldview

Question 13

Full field notes

Answer 13

Detailed notes which will become the main data source

Question 14

Mental notes

Answer 14

While engagin in casual conversation or (coffee) breaks

Question 15

Jotted/Scratch notes

Answer 15

Made up o “little phrases, quotes, key words and the like” to elaborate on and write up later

Question 16

Methodological notes

Answer 16

Observation about methodological decision, experiences in the field and barriers and breakthroughs relating to the use of methods

Question 17

Voice-recorded notes

Answer 17

Also known ad spoken field notes. Can also be digitally recorded and transcribed through software.

Question 18

Realist tales

Answer 18

Apparently definitive, confident, and dispassionate thrid person accounts of a culture and the behaviour of its members; the most prevalent form of ethnographic writing

Question 19

Confessional tales

Answer 19

Personalised accounts where ethnographer is fully impicated in the data-gathering and writing-up processes; warts-and-all accounts of the trials and tribulations of doing ethnography

Question 20

Impressionist tales

Answer 20

Accounts that place a heavy emphasis on stories of dramatic events

Question 21

Structural tales

Answer 21

Linking the ethnographic study to wider issues in society at large

Question 22

Poststructural tales

Answer 22

Accounts that suggest that reality is socially constructed, subject to many types of interpretation

Question 23

Advocacy tales

Answer 23

Accounts that are motivated by a sense that something is wrong and where the ethnographer wants everyone to see that this is so

Question 24

Online ethnography

Answer 24

Ethnography done online

Question 25

Netnography

Answer 25

Tailored to the examination of communities that have an exclusively online existence