Qualitative field research

Goal is to understand social life in the context of theory Field research yields qualitative data Observations not easily reduced to numbers Researcher can develop a deeper and fuller understanding of social phenomena within natural setting

With qualitative field work we can study: Practices (religious practices..) Episodes (divorce, illness..) Encounters (interactions) Roles (occupations, family roles..) Relationships (mother-son relationships..) Groups (work groups, athletic groups..) Organizations (schools, government..) Settlements (refuge camps..) Social worlds (Wall Street, sports world..) Life styles or subcultures (urban underclass, gay communities)

Varying degrees of participantness Roles of the observer: Varying degrees of participantness Reactivity: the problem that the subjects may react to the fact of being studied, thus changing their behavior from what it would have been normally Danger of adopting the points of view of the people you are studying Losing your own frame of reference

Some paradigms Ethnography: Focuses on detailed and accurate description rather than explanation Richly detailed picture of the phenomena you are studying Based on telling “their” stories the way they really are, not the way the ethnographer understands them

Ethnomethodology: The study of social life that focuses on the discovery of implicit usually unspoken assumptions and agreements method for understanding the social orders people use to make sense of the world through analysing their accounts and descriptions of their day-to-day experiences People describe their world not “as it is” but “as they make sense of it” Reveal how people make sense of their world

CAse studies: The in-depth examination of a single instance of some social phenomena, such as a village, a family, a street gang Might be a period of time Limitation of attention to a particular group

Institutional ethnography: A research technique in which the personal experiences of individuals are used to reveal power relationships and other characteristics of institutions within which they operate (mothering, marriage, Microsoft, Koç Holding…) Virtual ethnography

Virtual ethnography the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. "online ethnography" ,"virtual ethnography" and "netnography". technologically mediated interactions in online networks and communities, and the culture (or cyberculture) shared between and among them. İt suggests that ethnographic fieldwork can be meaningfully applied to computer-mediated interactions

Strengths and weaknesses Focus groups: Group of subjects interviewed together, prompting a discussion Strengths and weaknesses Depth of understanding Flexibility Relatively inexpensive

OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH Note: This section is not in your reader

Observational research design The researcher observes and systematically records the behavior of individuals in order to describe the behavior Goal is to observe natural behavior Its is essential that behaviors are not disrupted or influenced by the presence of of an observer Requires some degree of subjective interpretation Habituation: repeated exposure until the observers presence is no longer noticed

Subjectivity is an issue: Need to develop a list of well-defined categories of behavior İdentify categories of behavior we want to measure List exactly which behaviors count as examples of each category This list enables observers to know exactly what to look for and how to categorize behavior Requires a clear operational definition of each construct

Subjectivity (cont’d) Use well-trained observers Use multiple observers to assess inter-rater reliability Quantifiying observations: Frequency method: counting the instances of each specific behavior (child committed 6 aggressive behaviors in 30 minutes) Duration method: how much time an individual spends engaged in a specific behavior (child spent 10 minutes palying by himself in 30 mins

Types of observations: Naturalistic observation Nonparticipant observation Observe the natural setting behavior ordinarily occurs and has not been arranged JAne Goodall example Participant observation Researcher interacts with the participants and becomes one of them to observe and record behavior (mental patient example) Structured observation Observation is arranged specifically to facilitate behavior (TEÇGE) example

Strenghts: Weaknesses Observed in real world Actual and nonmanipulated behavior Get info not accessible elsewhere Participation gives a unique perspective Weaknesses time-consuming Potential for observer influence Subjective interpretation Loss of objectivity