Ethnographic Research

Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethnographic Research

Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethnographic Research

Introduction

The historical roots of qualitative research were initiated by popular anthropologists and sociologists. They were inquiring about people's life, their life style regarding social and cultural life styles; understanding about the world and so on so forth. They went to the city in United States and observed people and collected their views. The write up for the study was known as Qualitative Research. Besides anthropologists and sociologists other field scholars such as education, law, counselling, health and social work have taken an interest in studying this phenomenon. Today there are a number of books, journals and articles that are written about qualitative research by different scholars (Merriam, 2009, pp.6-7).

Denzin and Lincoln in 2005 define qualitative research as the activity that identifies the observer in the world. After several observable facts, they have concluded qualitative research as the study in natural settings that are to observe a person and bring those observations into meaningful interpretations. Another definition was given by Van Maanen in 1979; he stated that it is an umbrella term carrying interpretative techniques, which portray, interpret, transform, come to meaningful insights and not the frequency that is the communication of people in naturally occurring phenomenon has been interpreted in the social world (Merriam, 2009, Pp.13).

The idea behind qualitative research is it gives meaningful insights about views of people, their thinking patterns, and their world experiences regarding any object or situation. It is not necessary that views of people are similar, but they are contrary also. Depending upon the topic they are discussing. There are four characteristics that came under the category of qualitative research they are the focal point is procedure, significance and understanding, the role of the researcher is of prime importance in data collection and analysis, process is inductive and last but not the least this research is descriptive in nature (Merriam, 2009, Pp.14).

It was identified that qualitative research is social inquiry that focuses on interpretation of people and their experiences (Blackwell publishing). The educational researchers, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists are conducting qualitative researches. There are different filed of people who have studies qualitative research and they have applied a variety of the phenomenon in qualitative research. The present and most common approaches to qualitative research are basic qualitative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, narrative analysis and critical qualitative research (Merriam, 2009, pp 21-22).

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research where in-depth detail regarding everyday life practice came under consideration. Ethnography is a product whose aim is to identify cultural interpretation. An ethnographer explains an overview of people life style and culture. They report detail of their life experiences and ideas. It is a more distant and analytical point of view that is explained by an ethnographer (Horney, 2012).

Ethnographic studies are common in journals and many practices. An ethnographic study is conducted by bicycle messengers in the United Kingdom. So in general ethnography is a study which takes place in natural ...