Ethnographic Research - Matthew J. Brown

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ETHNOGRAPHIC DATAsynthesizing field notes. These skills can be learned if youdo not already possess them.To be an effective participant observer, though, youalso will need certain attitudes and sensitivities. Youwill need to be capable of and comfortable with fadinginto the background of a social situation-what Lindlof(1995) called a tolerance for marginality. You also willneed to be sensitive to all the verbal and nonverbal communicationcues that are available in a social setting, notjust visual and auditory cues. Instead, we can "open upour sensing to the tastes, smells, tempers, touches, colors,lights, shapes, and textures of the cultures we study"(Lindlof, 1995, p. 138). Finally, to be an effective participantobserver, you will need to be good at "giving people.the benefit of the doubt, getting along by going along,and not being overly querulous or contentious" (Fine,1993, as cited in Lindlof, 1995, p. 139). If you are observingyourself, you will need to use all of the skills we justmentioned, and you will need to develop reflexivity:A researcher must reflect on their own experiences inorder to discern how they are both product and producerof a given cultural phenomenon. However, rather thanlapse into solipsism or catharsis, the researcher must articulatesuch moments so as to engender similar reflection inthe reader, so that the reader might understand how theystand in relation to the same phenomenon. (A. F. Wood &Fassett, 2003, p. 288)Participant observation will allow you to see what themembers do and say in their setting; interviews with keyinformants, on the other hand, will help you to describewhat members report that they do and say and what sensemembers make of those actions and interactions. Forexample, you may observe the stories participants tell, towhom those stories are told, where, with what structures,forms of elaboration, and so on. The stories participantstell one another in their natural settings may be quite differentthan the stories they relate to you, the researcher inthe context of an interview. Thus, observations provide adifferent window into the participants' worlds than doesparticipants' talk about their world. Interviews with keyinformants are one of the ethnographer's methods foruncovering participants' talk about their world.Interviews With Key InformantsCompared to the individual or focus group interviewsthat you learned about in chapter 7, "Survey Research:'the ethnographic interview is "the most informal, conversational,and spontaneous form of interview" (Lindlof,1995, p. 170). Ethnographic interviews take the forms ofconversations and storytelling between participants andresearchers. The interview is a way to find out things thatyou cannot directly observe (Newman & Benz, 1998;Patton, 1990).Just as selecting participants to interview is criticalto your participation in and observation of a setting,establishing rapport with in.formants is essential if youare to gain useful interview data. Rapport means that thepeople you interview and observe feel comfortable withyou and trust you; it-does not mean that they see you asnaIve, "or an easy target for deception" (Madison, 2005,p. 32). Your demeanor and appearance, listening skills,and nonverbal style all contribute to your effectiveness asa human research instrument in the interview process. Ina collaborative ethnography, you may want to use interviewertraining to ensure that interviews are conductedconsistently (i.e., interactions with one informant arecomparable to interactions with another informant, andinterviews conducted by one researcher are comparableto interviews conducted by another researcher workingon the same research project).You may want to revie'Ythe information in chapter 7, "Survey Research:' oninterviewer training as well.There are three main forms of ethnographic interview:(1) "oral history which is a recounting of a socialhistorical moment reflected in the life or lives of individualswho remember them and/or experienced them";(2) "personal narrative, which is an individmil perspectiveand expression of an event, experience, or point of view" ;and (3) "topical interview, the point of view given to aparticular subject, such as a program, an issue, or a process... each type will often and necessarily overlap withthe others" (Madison, 2005, p. 26). Each of these types ofinterview can be structured or unstructured (Spradley,1980). If your interview is structured, check your writteninterview schedule to be sure that each of your questions,and the overall organizational pattern, are consistentwith your study's purpose and your claim(s).Whether you are adopting the interpretive or criticalparadigm perspective, you will likely use unstructured,or minimally structured, face-to-face interviews. Youmay not have any questions written out before beginningto observe the setting and participants because theparticipants' actions will indicate to you what questionsare important to ask (Schwartzman, 1993; Spradley,1980). Indeed, participant observations will almost certainlybe needed to determine whom you will want tointerview.
242 I CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHAs your interview format becomes less structuredand more personal, your role will be more interactive.Whatever degree of structure you plan to incorporate,use these guidelines for a successful ethnographic interview:(1) Respondents must feel that their interactionswith you will be pleasant and satisfying, (2) they needto see your study as being worthwhile, and (3) barriersto the interview in their minds need to be overcome(Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias, 1996).Before you conduct your first interview with aninformant, develop face sheets and postinterview commentsheets. Both of these items will help you develop anaudit trail, a record of all the data you are about to collect(Lofland & Lofland, 1995). Face sheets include detailsabout the interviews such as a code or name for the participant;the date, place, and time of the interviews; andany relevant demographic information about the interviewees.Comment sheets are for you to jot down notesafter your interviews, perhaps concerning the emotionaltone of the interview, your insights and reflections aboutany difficulties you encountered during the interview,and so on.In addition to creating face sheets and commentsheets, you will need to develop an introduction to theinterview. What will you say to a participant before youbegin the interview? You will probably want to taperecord interviews, so you can think and talk and not beoccupied with field notes during the interview (Lofland& Lofland, 1995). But you should take a few notes whilethe tape is running just to help you pay attention.As a novice ethnographer, never enter the interviewscene without some interview guide. Your guide mightbe a page of one-word notes about themes, symbols, andpatterns observed in artifacts or other data, but it wouldnever be a strict schedule of questions. If you are doingethnography of speaking, you may want to have a copy ofHymes's (1974a) SPEAKING mnemonic with you duringobservations or interviews. If you are doing performanceethnography, you may want to have with you some outlineof the scenes you intend to develop from your datacollection (Denzin, 2003; Madison, 2005). The importantthing is to give yourself enough of a guide to focus yourinterviews but not so much as to override the directionyour key informant suggests for your conversation.In some cases, you may want to combine participantobservations and/or interviewing key informantswith analysis of archival documents or cultural artifacts(i.e., texts). Let's consider each of these sources of ethnographicevidence next.Archival DocumentsThe archival documents used for ethnographic researchare usually written texts that you encounter in the fieldsetting. Archival documents are sometimes implicated inthe talk or actions of participants whom you are observing.Alternatively, archival texts may help you gain backgroundknowledge needed to reconstruct past eventsor processes that are not available for you to observe.Finally, library research about a setting or situation,including conducting a literature review on the topicarea you are studying, also makes use of archival documents,although in this section, we refer more to thosedocuments encountered in the field data collection itself.Participant diaries, memos, newsletters, e-mail messages,and newspaper clippings are all examples of such archivaldocuments. For instance, in her ethnography of FarEnd Design, Markham (1996) analyzed official companyliterature and diaries kept by employees, along with herfield notes from observations and interview transcripts.By considering not only the content of those documentsbut also their format characteristics, origins, uses, circulation,and so on, in conjunction with her other evidence,she identified some of the ambiguities and contradictionsexperienced by those employees. In the same way,archival documents can supplement your ethnographicevidence and help you understand how participants aremaking sense of their situations.You may also want to incorporate visual media, suchas film, video, or still photography, in your ethnographicproject, which are also considered texts for analysis, inconjunction with participation observations or interviewdata. In chapter 15, "Critical Studies;' we considersome examples of entire research projects based on textualinterpretation and evaluation of media sources. Butfor ethnography, texts are customarily used to triangulateevidence gained from self-report interviews or observationswith participants.ArtifactsFinally, you may want to examine actual objects usedby participants in the setting you study to understandthe participants' communication rules, meanings, orbehaviors. Such artifacts could include the participants'costumes and dress; items used in routine activities likeeating, cooking, bathing, meeting or interacting withother participants; and so on. As we just mentioned, artifactstypically support other kinds of ethnographic evidence,but artifactual analysis plays a more central role
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