Ethnography
Sociology: AQA GCSE, topic 6.1.14
Ethnography
Ethnography
- Ethnography is the observation and/or interaction and description of participants in real-life settings.
- Ethnography is used when researchers want to gather data from real life and understand how and what their participants experience at a given moment, in a given situation.
- Researchers can do this by using research methods such as surveys, interviews, and observations.
Advantages
- Ethnography collects qualitative data as most of the time, data is collected through observations and interviews. This makes it high in validity.
- Ethnography provides in-depth data as the researcher doesn’t only collect data of the present, but looks at participants' backgrounds as well.
Disadvantages
- It is hard to analyse.
- It is hard to get a representative sample.
- It is hard to make generalisations from the data.
- It can be found as unreliable as it is hard to replicate it.
- It is time-consuming and possibly expensive.
Disadvantages cont.
- There might be observer effect (the researchers might influence the behaviour of their participants because the latter know they are being monitored).
- Ethical problems may arise, such as confidentiality or privacy.
Test yourself on Ethnography
What are some of the pros and cons of ethnography?