Week 4 Reading Willis and Anderson: Ethnography as Health Research

Question 1

Ethnography

Willis & Anderson

Answer 1

= a research method that focuses on the scientific study of the lived culture of groups of people

Question 2

Ethnography etymology

Answer 2

Greek:
- ethnos = nation of people
- graphein = to write
first coined in 1834

Question 3

Culture (Spradley and McCurdy 2005)

Answer 3

= ‘the knowledge people use to generate and interpret social behaviour’

Question 4

Malinowski

Answer 4

developed ethnographic method: tradition that ethnography is conducted by living among other cultures for months and even years
‘the final goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight … is to briefly grasp the natives point of view, his relation to life, and to realise his vision of his world’ (Malinowski, 1922/1961)
accidental: stranded in Melanesia during WWI

Question 5

Evans-Pritchard

Answer 5

= father of medical anthropology
combined methodology of Malinowski and theory of Radcliffe-Brownn –> 1st anthropological work concentrating on medical practices and beliefs

Question 6

Father of medical anthropology

Answer 6

Evans-Pritchard

Question 7

Postmodern ethnography

Answer 7

• requires a traditional commitment to observationn and the use of key informants as the basis for description and analysis of the social world
• commitment to use of cases, particularly of conflict where individual interests oppose social forces
• embedded sense of what it is like to live in the social world described:
  
  • approaches: life history and life cycle

Question 8

Key informant

Answer 8

= individual able to provide in-depth info to an ethnographer

Question 9

Realist ethnography

Answer 9

• commitment to use of cases, particularly of conflict where individual interests oppose social forces

Question 10

Ethnography ‘double meaning’

Answer 10

• product of research
• process of accomplishing it

Question 11

The focus of ethnography

Answer 11

culture

Question 12

“Ethnographic approaches are useful …” (Wolcott 1990)

Answer 12

“Ethnographic approaches are useful in the study of the structures that underpin how people organise their accounts of the social world” (Wolcott 1990)

Question 13

Types of ethnography

4

Answer 13

• focused ethnography
• institutional ethnography
• ethno-nursing
• meta-ethnography

Question 14

Focused ethnography/’micro-ethnography’

Answer 14

= concentrates on a single problem in a particular setting

Question 15

Focused ethnography pros and cons

3+ 2-

Answer 15

(+) manageable workload for
researchers
(+) takes less time
(+) allows for the topic of interest to be identified before data collection
(-) ignores intercultural connections and the
complexity of whole cultural systems
(-) limits generalisability.

Question 16

Institutional ethnography

Answer 16

= aims to discover the chains of coordination and control in a social system or among settings of everyday life
- focus on social organisation and exploring social and cultural forces that shape, limit and otherwise organise people’s everyday worlds

Question 17

Institutional ethnography pros and cons

2+ 3-

Answer 17

(+) describes complex structures of societies
(+) allows researchers
to uncover the way institutional processes influence individual people
(-) difficult to collect data for
(-) requires researchers to be open-minded and responsive
(-) influence of social structures and forces on researchers’ perspectives and actions can affect the interpretation of data collected

Question 18

Ethno-nursing (Leininger, 1979)

Answer 18

” study and analysis of the local or indigenous people’s viewpoints, beliefs and practices about nursing care phenomena and processes of designated cultures” (Leininger, 1979)

Question 19

Ethno-nursing

Answer 19

= a method where ethnography is used to document and explain nursing phenomena in relation to care, health, illness prevention etc.

Question 20

Ethno-nursing pros and cons

2+ 1-

Answer 20

(+) can be applied to many different nursing settings using
a variety of data collection methods
(+) holistic representation of issues in nursing within their respective contexts
(-) data collected within the contexts and settings
of specific nursing practices and issues may be
unable to be applied to other contexts (non-generalisable)

Question 21

Meta-ethnography

Answer 21

= conducting systematic reviews of ethnographic studies
7-step process
- purpose: to provide new third-order interpretation of ethnographic data

Question 22

Meta-ethnography pros and cons

1+ 1-

Answer 22

(+) 7-step process makes a clear and reproducible method
(-) quality of systematic reviews relies on the quality of the pool of studies being reviewed and individual studies

Question 23

Etic

Answer 23

= outsider’s perspective, researcher has no knowledge or experience of culture being studies

Question 24

Emic

Answer 24

= insider’s perspective, conducted in one’s own culture e.g. ICU nurse researching ICUs

Question 25

Karen Anderson study

nurses

Answer 25

explored health promotional knowledge and skills taught in a university nursing course and graduate nurses’ health promotion practices
- focused ethnography
- institutional ethnography
- ethno-nursing

Question 26

Ethnography data collection methods

Answer 26

• observation
• participant observation (researcher participate + observe)

Question 27

Life history interviews

Answer 27

= participants structure experience according to chronological narrative logic by relating history of involvement in social group

Question 28

Participant observation

Answer 28

= researcher lives in community, observes people’s daily activities and witnesses behaviour first-hand

Question 29

Diary interview

Answer 29

= informants keep a diary of activities for set period, then interviewed about activities recorded

Question 30

Group interview techniques (e.g. focus group)

Answer 30

= aim to simulate naturalistic setting for collecting info from a homogenous group of participants
- points of agreement and disagreement are of equal interest

Question 31

Case studies in qualitatve research

(ethnography)

Answer 31

= study of a particular issue examined through one or more cases bound within a system such as a setting or context

Question 31

Visual techniques

Answer 31

= elicit contextual information about beliefs and practices:
e.g. photovoice (photo-elicitation technique): participants photograph important things in their lives, then explain choices
or
participants produce maps or diagrams of community and its resources

Question 32

Data analysis in ethnography 3 approaches

Answer 32

1. grounded theory analysis = data presented in form of a dialogue with key theoretical points raised in lit review –> confirm, contradict, or extend insights gained from literature
2. thematic theory analysis = categories and themes from field data as framework for analysis and presentation of data
3. Cultural analysis/thick description = critical incident from field data unpacked according to themes and categories from lit review and from thematic analysis of field data

Question 33

Grounded theory analysis

Answer 33

= data presented in form of a dialogue with key theoretical points raised in lit review –> confirm, contradict, or extend insights gained from literature

Question 34

Thematic theory analysis

Answer 34

= categories and themes from field data as framework for analysis and presentation of data

Question 35

Cultural analysis/thick description

Answer 35

= critical incident from field data unpacked according to themes and categories from lit review and from thematic analysis of field data

Question 36

Axial coding

Answer 36

= putting the data back together in new ways and making connections between categories

Question 37

Ethnography insights in health

Answer 37

• ways that patients understand illness and the struggle for health
• ways that health practitioners organise and justify their actions
• way societies privilige particular versions of health and illness while dismissing others