Ethnography

Week 3 Lecture
Required Reading: Holloway and Galvin (2017), Chapter 10
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 History of ethnography
Paradigm & philosophical underpinnings
Main features
Variation in ethnography
Setting
Methods for collecting data
Outline Field work and Field notes
Thick descriptions
Key Informants
Emic and Etic perspectives
Analysis and Interpretation
‘doing ethnography’ in healthcare

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• In your own words, what is the meaning of
Ethnography?

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 Selecting a Qualitative Method
If you are interested in …

Understanding human Uncovering social Learning cultural

experience processes patterns

Then you will choose the …

Phenomenological Grounded theory Ethnographic

method method method

And you may pose a question that begins like …

What is the human How does this social How does this cultural
experience of …? group interact to …? group express its
pattern of …?

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 Definition Ethnography
• Ethnos =people or cultural groups
Graphy=descriptive science
• Originated from the discipline of anthropology
• Method for scientifically describing cultural
groups (LoBiondo, pp 170)
• Use to explore the cognitive aspect or patterns
of behavior of people within a culture
• Focuses on ordinary social situations or events
or problems within a specific context

LoBiondo Wood, 2020; Savage, 2006.

 History of Ethnography
• Ethnographic research was initially conducted by anthropologists to
study cultures unfamiliar to the Western world.

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• Ambitions were directed toward
understanding the meaning of social
action within cultures (why people think,
feel, act, believe, value things the way
they do within specific cultural groups).
• In order to best capture the social
actions of people within diverse
cultures, researchers ‘went native’ for
long periods of time.
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Macro and micro
ethnography
• Macro: Larger culture within institutions,
communities and value systems, i.e., A hospital, or
the midwifery or physiotherapy sub-culture. Means
a long period of time in the setting and often
involves the work of several researchers.

• Micro: Seems more immediately relevant to the

world of the health professionals, while policy
makers would find macro ethnography more
useful.

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Modern or contemporary ethnography…within
a healthcare context

• Focused often on situations that could improve:

• healthcare for people or
• practice for healthcare providers

• Depending on the lens that ethnography is looked through it could disrupt the contexts
that are at play (i.e. critical ethnography)

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 • Descriptive or conventional ethnography: Focuses on
description, and, through analysis, uncovers patterns,
typologies and categories

• Critical ethnography: Has its basis in critical theory and

involves the study of macro social factors such as power.
The goal here is more to bring about change
Types of
Ethnographies • Feminist Ethnography: Similar to critical ethnography; focus
is on exposing patterns of oppression and power that
shapes women’s lives (attends to intersectionality)

• Auto-ethnography: Researchers focus the study on

themselves
• Many other types (ethno-geriatric, institutional
ethnography, focus ethnography, digital ethnography etc.).

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 • First used in health care, specifically in nursing in
the USA. (Janice Morse) qualitative studies. Same
with Leininger (1985) who used the term ethno-
Ethnography nursing; both had qualifications in anthropology.

in nursing • Difference with their view (Morse and Lininger)

and that of an anthropologist, is that they were
and health familiar with the language used in the nursing
setting whereas early anthropologists were not.
care • Ethnography in health care is referred to applied
research-the goal is often to improve care and
clinical practice.

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 • Medication communication between nurses and
Example of doctors for pediatrics acute care: An ethnography
study

Ethnography (Borrott et al., 2016)

in health • Entry into Nursing: An Ethnographic Study of

Newly Qualified Nurses Taking on the Nursing Role
care in a Hospital Setting
(Bjerkness & Bjork, 2012)

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 Part of the interpretive paradigm where meaning is constructed by
people (subjective). (Scotland, 2012)
Ontology
• The study of being…assumptions about what constitutes reality
• In ethnography, what constitutes reality for a cultural group is
explored with description analysis and interpretations made
regarding how things are and how they work within the life-world of
Paradigm & the group under study.
Epistemology
Philosophical • In ethnography, knowledge comes from the people within the

Underpinnings cultural groups that are being studied.

• People under study may provide their thoughts, experiences and
examples of what they understand the meaning of social actions to
be within the culture they are a part of.

• Knowledge also comes from the ethnographer, who through

fieldwork writes thick descriptions of what they observe and learn
from key and primary informants…but the data is
priority….knowledge comes from the data, which comes from the
people living and working within the group being studied.
(Holloway & Galvin, 2017)
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 Structure of the Study
• Research questions
• Lifeways, pattern of behaviours within
subculture
• Addressing cultural knowledge, norms, values
and other contextual variables influencing
person health or life experience
Research question guiding ethnographic Inquiry
• Descriptive or broad open-ended questions
• Follow by in-depth questions that expand and
very the unit of analysis
• Contrast questions that clarifies and provide
criteria for exclusion
LoBiondo Wood, 2020
Main features of
ethnography
• Data collection through observation and
interviews
• Use thick description
• Selection of key informants and setting:
usually use a sampling that is purposing
(criterion based)
• The emic-etic dimension

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 Values-emic
perspective
Emic/Insider perspective –Insiders views of the world
• Familiar or has some knowledge of the context
• Share identity, language, experiential knowledge of
places/events/ artifacts and jargons
•Advantages
• Access and acceptance to the research setting
• Trust and openness
• In-depth generation of data
•Disadvantage
• Blurs understanding due to researcher’s familiarity
• Undue influence of the researcher’s perspective
LoBiondo Wood, 2020; Webster & Rice, 2019
• Role conflicts
 Etic/Outsider
perspective-
•Etic/Outsider perspective-outsider view of the world
• Unfamiliar with context
•Advantages
• Objective understanding
• Access information that the insider may not be privy
to
• Able to make the familiar strange
•Disadvantages
• Difficulty establishing trust and gaining access
• Issues of misrepresentation
LoBiondo Wood, 2020,; Webster & Rice, 2019.
• Cultural shock
 Thick description

• Researchers write narratives using thick

descriptions to describe and interpret the people’s
accounts of their experiences and culture.
• Layers of meaning on top of each other, based on
the meanings certain actions and events have for
members of the group being studied, yet within
the cultural context.
• Allows readers to appreciate the emotions,
thoughts, feelings and perceptions that members
of a culture group experience. 18
Key ideas so far….
• Ethnography is the study of people within a culture
or cultural group.
• Ethnographers study human behaviour in the
context of culture (the cultural group they are a
part of) in order to gain understanding of
cultural rules, norms and routines.
• As part of the interpretive paradigm meaning is
constructed by people. People explain or
provide meaning about the groups social
actions.

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Methods of
data collection

• Observation
• Interviews
• Artifacts

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 • Natural settings
• Environments where the group
naturally exists.
• Within an education context this could
be in a classroom, laboratory space,
simulation room, library, athletic or
Setting student centre, etc.
• Where students learn, work, interact
and play
• Gaining access is key

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(Key) Informants
• Those individuals who will be able to provide the ethnographer with the greatest insight
into the phenomenon under study.
• Select carefully…..
• Key informants may be asked questions through a formal interview, which may have
structured or unstructured questions.
• They may also be asked questions ‘in the moment’ to gain clarity about something the
researcher observed.
• Formal interviews are recorded (with permission) then later typed verbatim into a
transcript.

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 • Terms used by ethnographers and other
qualitative researchers to describe data
collection “outside laboratories”. working in
the natural setting”
• Use participants observation and interviewing,
• Four steps of field work:
• Gaining access to study the culture
Fieldwork • Start focusing on particular issues
(questions informants on initial
observations
• Realize that saturation has occurred
(data saturation)
• Start the process of disengagement

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 Field notes
• these are notes or some other form • Field notes can take
that is written/collected/created in many forms…..
the natural field where the study is • Concept Maps
being conducted. • Diagrams
• Important sources of data that will • Narrative
be analyzed, along with the • Symbols
interviews that have been • Diary
conducted… to best describe • Video/audio recording
people’s social behaviors within a • Portraits/paintings/sculpture/
sociocultural context other art forms
Steps in Data Analysis
• Researchers organize their observations, field notes, artifacts, diaries,
interview transcriptions, etc. into manageable and meaningful
sections.
• Build, compare and contrast categories
• Search for relationships and group like categories together.
• Identify and describe patterns, themes and typologies in the data.
• Interpret and search the data for meaning.

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 • Takes place after analysis and provides
meaning for the phenomena.
• It involves some speculation, theorizing and
explaining but all are grounded in the
data….everything should be able to be traced
back to the data.
Interpretation • Can create links between the researchers data
analysis to theories that have already been
created.
• The end product (ethnography), is a written
story/performance that has been created from
the descriptions, analysis and interpretations
of the data collected.

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Example of an Ethnography study results
Medication communication between nurses and doctors for pediatrics acute care: An ethnography study
(Borrott et al., 2016). Jouranl of Clinical Nursing , 26, 1978-1992

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Video entitled: Qualitative Ethnography (Source:
Embraced Wisdom Resource Group

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 References
Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research. London: Sage.

Cruz E.V., Higginbottom G (2013). The use of focused ethnography in nursing research. Nurse
Researcher, 20(4), 36-43.

Higginbottom, G.M., Pillay, J.J., & Boadu, N.Y. (2013). Guidance on performing focused
ethnographies with an emphasis on healthcare Research. The Qualitative Report, 18(17), 1-16.
Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/higginbottom17.pdf

Holloway, I., & Galvin, K. (2017). Qualitative research in nursing and healthcare (4th ed). West
Sussex, UK: Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Munhall, P.L. (2012). Nursing research: A qualitative perspective (5th ed.). Sudbury MA: Jones &
Bartlett Learning.

Scotland, J. (2012). Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of research: Relating ontology, and
epistemology to the methodology and methods of the scientific, interpretive, and critical research
paradigms. English Language Teaching,5(9), 9-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p9