Proposing Ethnographic ResearchAlia Robeson Tyner Mullings

Ask many college students where they usually conduct research and chances are the answers will be the internet and, maybe, the library. This type of research is usually going to be secondary research which can result in the gathering, summarizing, and assessing of data that already exists. It is likely that most of the research you have conducted in high school and college would be classified as secondary. But it’s also possible that you have some experience with primary research. Have you ever conducted an interview? Have you ever designed and/or administered a survey? These sorts of actions are categorized as primary research—research that involves the direct collection of data from real-world interactions.

An ethnographic writing project is one that requires the melding of both primary and secondary research. While secondary research is also very important, it is the primary research that is a defining characteristic of ethnography and it will take place at a specific (or multiple) research site of your own choosing. This chapter focuses on putting together a plan and a proposal for primary social science research.^[1]

Introduction to Research

Scientific Research

Given that theories and observations are the two pillars of science and social science, our research also operates at these two levels: a theoretical level and an empirical level. The theoretical level is concerned with developing abstract concepts about a natural or social phenomenon and the relationships between those concepts (i.e., build “theories”), while the empirical level is concerned with testing theoretical concepts and relationships (and/or creating new ones) to see how well they reflect our observations of reality, with the goal of ultimately building better theories. Scientific research involves continually moving back and forth between theory and observations. Both theory and observations are essential components of scientific research. For instance, relying solely on observations for making inferences and ignoring theory is not considered valid scientific research.

Inductive and Deductive

Depending on a researcher’s training and interest, scientific inquiry may take one of two possible forms: inductive or deductive. In inductive research, the goal of a researcher is to infer theoretical concepts and patterns from observed data. In deductive research, the goal of the researcher is to test concepts and patterns known from theory using new empirical data. Hence, inductive research is also called theory-building research, and deductive research is theory-testing research. Note here that the goal of theory-testing is not just to test a theory, but possibly to refine, improve, and extend it.

Inductive and deductive research are two halves of the research cycle that constantly iterates between theory and observations. You cannot do inductive or deductive research if you are not familiar with both the theory and data components of research. Naturally, a complete researcher is one who can traverse the entire research cycle and can handle both inductive and deductive research. This is why your professors often ask you to do a review of the literature before starting a project or ask you to return to your references once you have entered the field for the first time. It is important to understand that theory-building (inductive research) and theory testing (deductive research) are both critical for the advancement of science.

Rather than viewing these two processes in a circular relationship, perhaps they can be better viewed as a helix, with each iteration between theory and data contributing to better explanations of the phenomenon of interest and better theories. Though both inductive and deductive research are important for the advancement of science, inductive (theory-building) research may be more valuable when there are few prior theories or explanations, while deductive (theory-testing) research could be more productive when there are many competing theories of the same phenomenon and researchers are interested in knowing which theory works best and under what circumstances. This is important to consider when thinking about the research you are about to embark on.

Theory building and theory testing can be difficult in the social sciences, given the imprecise nature of the theoretical concepts, inadequate tools to measure them, and the presence of many unaccounted factors that can also influence the phenomenon of interest. Unlike theories in the natural sciences, social science theories are rarely perfect, which provides numerous opportunities for researchers to improve those theories or build their own alternative theories. Conducting scientific research, therefore, requires two sets of skills – theoretical and methodological – needed to operate at the theoretical and empirical levels respectively. ^[2]

Starting Your Research

Building a plan

Before the act of writing a research proposal, you need a starting point for your research. This could come from anywhere. It might be a paper you researched previously in your education or observations you have made about the social world. There may be an issue that you have noticed in your education, neighborhood, work or family, or a general topic about something that is currently happening in your city or country, or somewhere else in the world. Ethnographic research is site-based so another important part of this beginning process, and often where an idea might emerge, is the site at which your research will take place.^[3] In Ethnographies of Work, this is most often a workplace or career.

Once you have come up with that idea, you need to think about what your questions are, what other, broader ideas might be connected to your research, a plan for your data collection, and the value of your research. As is the case with most research connected to people and community, things may not always go according to your plan and you may learn things other than you’d planned to learn. The proposal is the beginning of your thoughts on the topic and therefore, a very important piece of the process. The proposal asks you to question what you know, what you don’t know, and what you hope to know and creates a pathway for you to find out.

Writing the proposal

The format of your ethnographic research proposal follows a proposal format but if you have a particular direction from your instructor, that should take precedence over what is described here but, if not, the central elements in a research proposal include:

The purpose of writing a research proposal is that it will help you clarify your own ideas and questions. If the proposal is assigned as a part of a class, it will also help your teacher provide guidance on how to gather data from your site. Even if you haven’t been assigned a formal proposal, you should walk through these steps in your thinking and at least sketch out the trajectory of a proposal so that you have a better idea of the focus of your own research.^[4]

Introduction

An introduction is one of the parts of a paper you are probably most familiar with. In this paragraph or two, you introduce what your proposal is going to be about. The introduction is the first connection your reader has with your work but I often advise my students to save it for last. It can be hard to narrow down everything you want to say in your entire paper. Sometimes you are not aware of what the main point of your paper is until you have concluded it.^[5]

Literature review

As described above, this step can happen at a variety of points in the research process and will likely occur at more than one point but, before the end of a project, a student or researcher will need to conduct background research through a literature review, which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library or a thorough online search can help you to uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps you to gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables you to position your own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to use direct quotes, summarized and paraphrased information that has been previously published (as long as it enhances your unique viewpoint), must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study race in the medical field, for example, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about working in professional fields, racial discrimination of workers in the medical field, or the demographics of workers in hospitals. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve studies' designs.

Lines of Inquiry and Research Question(s)

To return to the scientific method described above, in your research, you will need to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest.^[6] The order of these elements and the ways in which they work together and intersect with each other depend on your role and interest. Your starting point could come from different sources. As an undergraduate student, you might be informed by a professor about the topic of your paper, as in the Ethnographies of Work classes. In other classes, you might be provided with a particular method, or combinations of methods, and asked to select a question. Most graduate students or professional researchers begin with questions, populations, or sites of interest and select their methods based on what works best for that research. Professional researchers could also have a vague topic and decide to explore it in more detail through secondary sources or grounded research. In either case, it is important to be aware of the ways in which research questions and research methods work together to help you to produce valid research.^[7]

Your topic might be developed directly out of your literature review, it might come from questions you have about the world (see above) or it might come from spending time in the field at a particular site (see grounded research below). Either way, the topic should be narrow enough to study within a geographical and time frame. “How do people work in a supermarket?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What is the relationship between Principal James and the custodial crew at Central Park High?” would be too narrow. That said, work and relationships are worthy topics to study. Sociologists do not rule out any topic but would strive to frame these questions in a way that makes them possible to research but also something beyond me-search.

That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits affect the work experiences of employees?” If hygiene is specifically washing your hands, or keeping your workplace clean, you might have a different research question and other methods for studying it. When forming these basic research questions, sociologists often develop an operational definition, that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner.

The operational definition must be valid, appropriate, and meaningful. And it must be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good employees” might be defined in many ways: those who show up on time, those who are nice to customers, or those who help out their fellow colleagues. But this idea could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “an employee who has received a commendation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.^[8]

Ethnography adds to this idea of a sociological (or in many cases anthropological) question. The research question should inform the type of research you are conducting. If you are interested in an in-depth reasoning for why someone does something or acts in a particular way, asking the questions in an interview or focus group may provide you with more useful data than asking them to choose between predetermined categories in a survey.^[9]

Students often initially struggle with the research question sections of their research proposals. They select interesting sites, know why they are interested and are able to describe research plans and methodologies, but often wonder how to think about their lines of inquiry and clearly state how their research connects to the wider world. As a means of guiding, but not prescribing, ways to think about your research site, you can use some of the following questions as food for thought for potential inquiry before moving into the writing of your actual research proposal.

In communities that bring together people of seemingly similar backgrounds:

In communities that bring together people of different backgrounds:

In communities of family, home, circle of friends, or neighborhood:

In communities connected to churches or societies:

In communities connected to US subcultures:

Grounded Research

Rather than going into a field with a particular question in mind, you might also consider using a visit into the potential field to begin to form the questions you are thinking about and how you will begin to answer that. This might include a survey of related cultural texts. These are those objects, actions, and behaviors that reveal cultural meanings. A photo is an image, but is also a cultural text, a picture with cultural information beyond just the picture itself. Food and clothing also suggest cultural information, and it doesn’t stop there. The entire place and space, the people and their interactions, the rituals and rules, and the various forms in which they manifest themselves, are “readable” texts, suitable for observation and analysis by the ethnographer and writer—namely by you.

This initial description of a cultural text may make it seem as though everything is a cultural text. While in some sense this is true, it doesn’t mean that every text has particular cultural relevance. Sometimes, a book is just a book is just a book, a picture just a picture. The difference between a relevant cultural text, (one that has connection with your project), and an irrelevant cultural text, (one that may have nothing to do with your project), has to do with the meaning transferred to that text by the people who create and/or use the text. The relevance of any particular cultural text will be determined as you conduct your research. But even before you work on determining whether a cultural text has particular relevance, you need to know and understand how to identify and analyze a cultural text.

Identification of a cultural text is relatively easy. Take a look around the space you are in right now and briefly catalog the people and/or things you see. Many of these objects and actions are cultural texts. In a traditional American college classroom, there are some cultural texts that are fairly standard: tables and chairs or desks; bright lighting; black, or whiteboard to write on. Your classroom may also be a ‘smart room’, complete with a computer, projector, or smart board. There may be windows, one or two doors. The floor may or may not be carpeted. There will also be the presence, or not, of decoration—paint, tile, etc. A space may or may not be void of people, who are also considered to be cultural texts. Their actions, arrangements, and demographics reflect how the space is used. What is in a space and what happens in the space are all cultural texts that are available for analysis. In other words, the space and objects within it are “readable” cultural texts. They say something about the purpose, needs, and perhaps even values and beliefs of the people who occupy it.

The identification of cultural texts will be necessary, but they are fairly easy to identify once you get the hang of it. The real work of ethnographic research is the analysis of these cultural texts once you spot them. Your classroom will likely include places for people to sit and surfaces on which to write. What we may not all share is the form of these seats and surfaces and the formation of these seats in the room. Look around and take note: Are there individual desks, or tables and chairs? Can you move seats into different arrangements? Are there computers? How are the desks arranged? Where do the students sit? Where does the instructor sit/stand? Does your teacher or professor ask you to move the room into a different arrangement at the beginning of class? Is that arrangement different depending on the day’s activities?

Artifacts at a site may seem so “normal” to the people who use them that they don’t even realize they carry any meaning. As reader and researcher of cultural texts (artifacts, styles, rituals, behaviors, expressions, etc.), you will have to interpret as you observe while attempting at the same time to understand how the community you are observing interprets their own cultural patterns. Whether you are an insider (a member of the community) or an outsider (an observer of the community), when you present your ethnographic research, you will attempt to tell the story of how things look from the inside. It is important to remember that each viewpoint you encounter (including your own) is one way of seeing and interpreting things, not the only way of seeing and interpreting things.

Returning to the instance of the classroom, consider the following questions:

These types of questions could begin to form the basis of your ethnographic research questions. Once these have begun to form, you may want to return to the previous section and consider how these ideas might be developed into questions.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about the answer to your questions. In quantitative research, as you might do in a statistics class, this is usually about the correlation between independent variables and dependent variables. In qualitative research, as in ethnography, a hypothesis might develop about how people interact or understand the world around them. This is less likely to be tied to specific variables and is much more about interpretation. Qualitative data often provides information on the “what” while qualitative research is focused on the “how.”

Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis aren’t welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. Quantitatively, you might predict this in one way but, it is through the qualitative work that you engage with respondents and ask them to elaborate on their work which may illuminate some of these exceptions and specifically, when, why, and how they occur. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

Research more firmly based in a qualitative method might not follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework, sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective, seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge. An interpretive research project is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of researcher also learns as he or she proceeds and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

This is the type of framework you are more likely to encounter in ethnographic methods and therefore, your methods section is especially important in completing a proposal for ethnographic research. ^[12]

Confirming/Selecting a site

Now that you are aware of some of the things, theories and/or ideas you will be looking for, you might engage or reengage with possible sites for your primary research (if you used a grounded approach, you may have begun here). Sites can be both physical and virtual, dealing with online and real-time communities. Sometimes you might select a site where you see yourself as a complete insider, and sometimes you might be less able to find that connection immediately, and choose a location because of another interest, such as cultural background, personal belief, or even social interest.

No matter what, the most important factor when selecting your own site is choosing a place or space or group of people to whom you already feel connected in some way, either by direct membership, burgeoning interest, or cultural/political belief. That last statement is so important that it merits repetition. The most important consideration as you narrow your search for a research site is to identify some kind of a connection with the place/space, even if you might not consider yourself a complete insider, even if you believe you know very little about the culture and, even if you have never been there. We recommend that students have a personal connection with their site for a few reasons:

Outsider and Insider

There is an important caveat if you are considering writing as an insider and selecting a group or site to which you already belong. The “insider” perspective is challenging because it can be quite difficult to see yourself and your friends with the eyes of a researcher and observer when you are not confronted with anything unfamiliar, if you are simply doing what is “normal.” You also may find that it becomes awkward to talk and write about some of the observations you make. Being able to see patterns and find the rituals and rules that members of a community take for granted is a challenge if you are a part of that community.

As an example, one student decided to look at how Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was able to form such strong support networks. This was an “insider” group for him because he attended an AA meeting every day. As a writer and ethnographer, his challenge was to take that very familiar world and to see it with the new eyes of a cultural observer. While he could see and report on the very obvious rituals and “rules” of AA and AA meetings, he was not comfortable writing about some of the deeply personal issues that came up in the meetings in which he was both an active participant and an observer. He was not ready, nor was he ethically able, to share some of those things with the world outside of AA. Ultimately he was able to write a very good essay about how AA created a “safe” space for him. The struggles he faced in writing a very personal, close-to-home ethnography are not uncommon when researching as an “insider,” so you should keep these things in mind as you consider possible research sites.

The challenge in writing from more of an outsider perspective—making sure to choose a site based upon some genuine interest that is not driven by voyeurism—is the opposite of that of the insider challenge. You will probably find many patterns and interesting things to explore, but you may have more difficulty becoming a participant in the community and finding the meaning in your observations. Deciding which behaviors are meaningful (rituals) and which are just done (habit) can be problematic. If you are able to discern between those two things, you then have to move on to presenting an interpretation of what the meaning might be. You will need to be very aware of your own filters and make sure that you find out how the members of the community see things.

As is the case with the dangers of the “insider” perspective, problems with being clearly situated as an “outsider” in a research site have ethical implications. Some students may be tempted to choose sites based upon stated interests in issues such as homelessness, homosexuality, exotic dancing, and other ‘foreign’ communities. When a site is chosen because of a kind of voyeuristic impulse, the project itself is at risk of being unethical. If it is impossible for the individual to become a participant-observer, and not just remain an observer, the student-research risks ‘othering’ the members of the community that they’re observing. Students must select sites and research trajectories that allow them to participate in the community rather than simply watch it from afar. Often, the solution can be to figure out how to engage in a volunteer scenario and serve the community in some way, via homeless shelter, or community organization. If this option seems impossible, then a student would do well to read a couple memoirs written by folks in their community of interest, and choose a different site.

Gaining Access

No matter how excited you are about a group or site, if you don’t have access to a community, you cannot conduct ethnographic research. The three most common reasons that limit the type of access that students need are:

Because there is no one way to choose a site or to write ethnography, making a good decision regarding a research site might seem difficult. This is true. But this also means that there are also endless possibilities for success. If you take the time to carefully consider finding a site or group that you have a genuine interest in, your research and your writing will be much better.

As you go through the process of selecting your site and writing your proposal, keep one very important thing in mind: you are ethically obligated to let the people you are studying know what you are doing when you begin and you should seek to establish some kind of mutually beneficial, reciprocal relationship. If you are going to a site to collect data, you must represent your mission as such. This is not undercover or hidden-camera work. If you fear letting people at your site know what you are doing and why you are doing it (this comes back to that physical or emotional harm thing), then once again, choose another site.

In an age of reality TV and tell-all talk shows, there are always some students who are excited about the possibilities of “not telling” or of using the information they uncover to pit people against each other. For example, one student wrote about fighting in his family, and he really wanted to use inside information to set his family up for a big, blow out fight – for the purposes of his research. While that may or may not have been a smart personal strategy, as a writer and ethnographic researcher, it crossed the ethical behavior line. Overall, the issues of ethics come back to respect for the people and cultures at your site. You need the kind of access we have discussed in this section to collect enough data from which to write and present your interpretations, and both your research process and writing must be accomplished with this respect.^[13]

Methods and Theory

Methodological skills ("know-how") are relatively standard, invariant across disciplines, and easily acquired through social science classes. However, theoretical skills ("know-what") is considerably harder to master, requires years of observation and reflection, and are tacit skills that cannot be “taught” but rather learned though experience. All of the greatest scientists in the history of mankind, such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Neils Bohr, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Simon, were master theoreticians, and they are remembered for the theories they postulated that transformed the course of science. As described above, both methodological and theoretical skills are needed to be an extraordinary researcher!^[14]

As described above, grounded theory is an example of how these two methods of inquiry can interact with each other. In grounded theory, you use research methods to build theories while you are in the field. In this case, you are entering a field before knowing exactly what you are interested in but with the understanding that there is “something” there that you want to further explore. It is your work, “on the ground” that develops your research question or theory after which you might cycle back to early research steps. Some students in the Ethnographies of Work class that we teach at Guttman begin their ethnographic research with grounded theory—conducting observations on a workplace of interest without having a specific research question—and then they develop ideas and potential questions based on that first pass.^[15]

Importance of research

Now that you’ve waded through some of the issues surrounding interest, access, questions, and ethics, it’s time to think about whether there is something about the site or community that is worth finding out? As Harry F. Wolcott says in Ethnography: A Way of Seeing, “Ethnography begins with a researcher’s ability to frame an appropriate question or to recognize what contribution ethnography can make toward understanding some larger issue” (242). As a researcher and writer, then, you must examine the potential significance of your work. That significance can be personal (local) or public (global), but you have to consciously and actively raise questions about what that significance might be.^[16]

All of this emphasizes how your work should be important beyond your own interest. While some would describe qualitative research as not being generalizable, it is also intended to explore the underlying patterns that exist and how they engage the members of the group you are studying. Therefore, your research should be important to someone outside yourself. Employing your sociological imagination is important here as simply describing why a particular person interacts with another in a certain way loses something without the context of the place and time they are in. There may also be larger structural factors that are influencing them one way or another.

The proposal is an early step in your ethnographic research but there is so much more to do. Once you have completed it, it becomes a guide for the rest of your research. Although the final project may change (and you should confirm how much the final project can change), the proposal is the foundation on which those changes happen. It is an important part of the process whether or not it is a required part.^[17]

References

Arkowitz, Hal, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. 2009. “Lunacy and the Full Moon: Does a full moon really trigger strange behavior?” Scientific American. Retrieved October 20, 2014 (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ lunacy-and-the-full-moon/).

Berger, Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. New York: Anchor Books.

Merton, Robert. 1968 [1949]. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.

“Scientific Method Lab,” the University of Utah, (http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/scientific_method/ sci_method_main.html)

1. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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2. Adapted from Bhattacherjee, Anol, "Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices" (2012). Textbooks Collection. 3. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/oa_textbooks/3 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. ↑

3. Original work

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4. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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6. This text was adapted from Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang, Open Stax Introduction to Sociology under creative commons Attribution 4.0 International license

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8. This text was adapted from Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang, Open Stax Introduction to Sociology under creative commons Attribution 4.0 International license

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9. Original work

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10. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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11. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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12. This text was adapted from Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang, Open Stax Introduction to Sociology under creative commons Attribution 4.0 International license

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13. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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14. Adapted from Bhattacherjee, Anol, "Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices" (2012). Textbooks Collection. 3. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/oa_textbooks/3 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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16. Adapted from Engaging Communities: Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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