Common Ethnographic Research Methods

Ethnography is defined as “the study and systematic recordings” of human customs and cultures. Ethnography is one of the qualitative research methodologies (Snow, Morrill & Anderson, 2003) that are used to answer the complex questions about nature and the natural phenomenon. The most commonly used approach in anthropology for qualitative research is ethnography. Ethnography is subdivided into different methods and approaches that are intended to perform a particular job. The most common of them are as follows.

Participant Observation

According to Schensul, Schensul & LeCompte (1999), participation observation is the learning process, through the involvement and exposure of the researcher into day to day or daily activities of participants, where the participants are the ones that are under researcher observation. In participant observation, the researcher, as closely as possible, takes part in the everyday life and activities of the observant under study. In other words, it is the research approach in which the researcher gets close to people, and study them while making them feel secure (Bernard, 2011). And it is necessary in order to study and collect data.

The advantages of participant observation are the researcher’s access to “backstage culture” to properly understand “behaviours, intentions, situations, and events” (Munck & Sobo, 1998) of the observant as well as the opportunity to contribute to a spontaneous occasion.

Literature Review

A literature review is an approach that is used alongside other ethnographic research methods to accurately acquire the relevant data sets before the study, without relevant conduction off observation and research. It helps in understanding what is missing so far.

Reviewing the already present literature is the easiest way to define the outlines at home before any field work is done. Moffatt (1992), in his paper about ethnographic writings, mentioned that a large number, of studies on American culture, are based on literature reviews. He mentioned that one out of the five of these literature concludes their data almost entirely from self-reports, interviews, linguistic analysis, life-histories, analysis of fairly de-contextualized stories and other native texts.”

Interviews

The second best or method way to gather data for ethnographic research, besides participant observation, is interviews or informal conversations (Hammersley, 2014). From daily life chit chat to a complex questionnaire there is a range of interview’s types that may help in ethnographic research. Unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews are three major types. Structured or formal interviews are the most common method of interviews so far but are not good practice, because how can a complex life easily be understood through multiple choice questions. According to Fetterman (2009), structured interviews are just “verbal approximations of a questionnaire with specific research goals”.

History

History is considered one of the main components in every ethnographic research. It is important to look into historical archives before starting the actual fieldwork in ethnographic research (Fife, 2005). Historical researches are helpful in verifying the precision of the statements established in interviews and to provide insight into the past. There are two types of data or source of data in historical research analysis, primary and secondary. Primary sources include documents, relics, records i.e. archive, while the secondary ones are published studies and works like reports, theses and so on.

Reflection on Ethnographic Study

I am a student of Arts; my school life is full of ups and downs. Making friends and leaving them was a constant part of my life due to my father’s nature of work. This is, therefore, the case study of the issues that I encountered throughout my life, as a new student at a new place. The main problem that I was a student always faced is bullying. This issue is as old as the schools existed (Smith & Sharp, 2006). Bullying is defined as an aggression in which intentions are to harm, these intentions are re-occurring in nature and the powerful are trying to harass the less powerful (Nansel et al., 2001).

This study is a self-narrated auto-ethnographic based story that highlights the issue of bullying faced by me and thousands of others around the globe. The use of narrative or story-based method is selected since stories offer people with constant knowledge of knowing themselves and how they are correlated to the world, besides this auto-ethnography provides them to come along with the researcher to experience the events clearly (Miller, 2008). This case study, therefore, will give you a proper understanding of the findings.

Storied Experiences and Reflections

The very first day of my school was the day when I faced the bullied first time. I was nervous so I hesitated to ask anyone about the whereabouts of the class. Instead of going to the class I walked to the corner of the lobby and sat there in a coroner. Suddenly two boys emerged from a corner and rushed towards the room. I asked them to guide me to the class. One of them turned back to me came near and kicked me without any reason, since I was nervous so I looked at him astonishingly. He laughed at me and called me with names.

The effect of that kick was so devastating that I never felt in my life. Both physical and psychological pain of that kick was so potent that from then I never ever asked anyone on the very first day of school. Mental symptoms, depression, anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, and low self-esteem are the outcomes of the bullying that are found in youth even after years of being bullied (Salmivalli, Kaukiainen, Kaistaniemi & Lagerspetz, 1999).

Similarly, when in middle school, I faced bullying multiple times the most common of them were name-calling and physical assault. Literature reviews and interviews have shown clearly that bullying has multiple forms and are usually similar across the globe. The most common of them are verbal antagonism that has the parallel rate of recurrence in both male and female. Physical assault, threats of being beaten, name-calling and negative reaction are the most frequent types of bullying reported in boys, while in females sexual comments, rumours, teasing and taking personal possessions are few common ones (Nansel et al., 2001). The youth involved in bullying, either being bullied or the bullies both are found to have a decreased psychosocial functioning as compared to their counterparts.

Dialectics of the study

Closer inspection of my studies describes that bullying is a very old phenomenon and a lot of literature about children being harassed by children is present (Olweus, 1994). Peoples of every age have reported some experience of being bullied. Since it is a global issue, therefore to study it, the best ethnological research method is to review the literature and to take interviews.

References

Bernard, H. (2011). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

Fetterman, D. (2009). Ethnography: Step-by-Step (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE.

Fife, W. (2005). Doing fieldwork: Ethnographic Methods for Research in Developing Countries and Beyond. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Miller, D. (2008). Shades of gray: an auto-ethnographic study of race in the academy. International Journal Of Qualitative Studies In Education, 21(4), 347-373.

Moffatt, M. (1992). Ethnographic Writing about American Culture. Annual Review Of Anthropology, 21(1), 205-229.

Munck, V., &Sobo, E. (1998). Using Methods in the Field: A Practical Introduction and Casebook. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

Nansel, T., Overpeck, M., Pilla, R., Ruan, W., Simons-Morton, B., & Scheidt, P. (2001). Bullying Behaviors Among US Youth. JAMA, 285(16), 2094.

Olweus, D. (1994). Bullying at School: Basic Facts and Effects of a School Based Intervention Program. Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, 35(7), 1171-1190

Smith, P., & Sharp, S. (2006). School bullying: insights and perspectives. London: Routledge.

Snow, D., Morrill, C., & Anderson, L. (2003). Elaborating Analytic Ethnography. Ethnography, 4(2), 181-200.