INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

In order to ensure an ethical approach to this study, I submitted a request for
approval from the Human Subjects Board at the University of Oregon. I worked with the
review board in order to ascertain that the design of my research presented no substantial
risks or dangers to the population being studied. I submitted a summary of my proposal
for this research program, including the questions I planned to use during my interviews.
I received approval on November 5, 2016 for my proposal, protocol #09112015.005.
Principles of Ethnography
My study was based upon the principles of ethnography, most notably, the
principle of reflexivity. Reflexitivity, as an ethnographic term, is an awareness that the
researcher is part of the world being studied and that it is impossible to totally position
oneself as a detatched observer. (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983) Ethnography allows the
researcher to respond to this awareness by learning about a group through immersion and
participation in their environment. It proposes that some studies are more effective
through this sort of immersion rather than targeting an unrealistic position of total
objectivity.
A key advantage to an ethnographic approach is that it allows for a great deal of
nuance. It also allows for research subjects to shape how data will be interpreted by
pointing out directly which observations are important to focus on. Being able to explore
different profiles of children living at an “orphanage” would allow more nuanced
understandings of the many dimensions that being an OVC might encapsulate. Many
researchers, especially from mental or physical health backgrounds, have been forced by
their discipline’s conventions, to apply population boundaries that do not always exist in
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