1. Qualitative field research

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

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

11. OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH
Note: This section is not in your reader

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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