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Inaugural KEYSTONE Course on Health Policy and Systems Research 2015

Ethnography

Ethnography

Let us enlist a few problems in HPSR that we want to study

Overview

I. Studying human behavior

II. Meaning of ‘qualitative’

III. Ethnography

I. STUDYING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Human behavior

Meaning of human behaviour

• Neither fully random nor completely structured

• Not based on ‘fact’, ‘truth’, ‘scientific knowledge’ or rationality (pure reason)

• Often based good or bad

• Derived from morals, values, habits, traditions, opinions, ethics, ideology, impressions, conscience, agency, will, beliefs, choices, aesthetics, emotions, desire, guilt etc. (practical reason)

• Human behavior is ‘social’, ‘cultural’ - through culture, we share a sediment of values, patterns of imagination, expectations and behavior

• Our behavior is not only collective but also interactive and interpretative

• Behaviour gets influenced by perceptions and imagery people have

14-Mar-16 Dr. N. Nakkeeran, IIPHG 7

Human behavior

Meaning

• Response to a behavior depends meaning that is attributed to it.

• No ‘grand theory’ or laws to predict or even understand human behavior

• Human behavior cannot be understood as objects of external reality but understood from within.

• More than objective meaning there is subjective meaning to human behavior which is more important / Emic

• Interpretative understanding of human actions.

• Intentionality of human action and its interpretation

14-Mar-16 Dr. N. Nakkeeran, IIPHG 9

Meaning of human behaviour

Ever-growing reliance upon objectivecriteria of thought …(has led to) … ever-deepening ignorance of the real nature of human existence

- Attributed to Karl Jaspers

• Social reality is not ‘out-there’

• It is constructed

• We see what we want to see

• We see the way we have been trained to see (class -exercise)

• Our behvaiour too gets shaped accordingly

Ethnography has the potential to unravel this social construction and understand meaning of human behavior better

http://irmelindrake.blogg.no/1339136688_hva_slags_innramming_.html

• A great deal of research depend on what people say

• Most methods depend on what people say

• But• Responses can be dynamic• May say what we want to hear• May say what is politically right / what ought to be• May not share the same cultural idioms and experiences of the

researcher• What people say and their attitude are not an unambiguous predictor

of their action (Jerolmack and Khan, 2014)• May not have the ability to answer questions requiring cognitive

abilities.

• Ethnography solves most of these problems in one way or the other14-Mar-16 Dr. N. Nakkeeran, IIPHG 13

II. MEANING OF ‘QUALITATIVE’

•Qualitative variable

•Qualitative Data

•Qualitative Method

•Qualitative Methodology

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 15

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 16

Qualitative variables

http://scene.sg/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cards.jpg; www.goodmenproject.com

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 17

Qualitative data

www.Iconarchive.com

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 18

Qualitative methods

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 19http://karljwiggins.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/qualitative-methods-pitureeeeeee2.gif

Key-informant interview

Participant observation

Focus group discussion

Case study

Rapid methods

Qualitative MethodologyA particular orientation and study design which subscribe to the idea that reality is socially constructed or interpreted

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 20

III. ETHNOGRAPHY

• Defining element of Anthropology.

• ‘ethno’ – culture; ‘graphy’ - study

• Process as well as the product

• Not any more the preserve of anthropology

• Long period of intimate study of a small well defined community

• Residence in the community

• Prolonged fact-to-face interaction

• ‘Naturalist’ - study normal life, banal

• Strong rapport

• Emic

• Holistic

• Importance of context

• Inductive & interactive process of inquiry

• Describing rather than determining causality

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 23

Characteristics

• Reflective and reflexive

• Empowers study participants – aims at removing asymmetry in power relation between researcher and participant

• Combines participant observation and informal interview

• Research rules are more like principles to follow.

• Little standardisation of instruments

• Study unfolds as it progresses

• Interpretation on the basis of compelling theoretical reasons of internal consistency

3/14/2016 N. Nakkeeran IIPHG 24

Sampling

• Almost the entire universe is studied

• Idea of sampling is untenable with ethnography

• Theoretical sampling

Analysis

• Concurrent

• Inductive

• Iterative

• Emergent

• Data collection - Data reduction - Analysis are single interrelated process

Ethnography as a product of history

Cultural rambling / cultural repertoire

• Arm-chair ethnography

• Colonial administrators, Travellers, Missionaries, Museum collectors

• Explorations rather than study

• Of the exotic, the other

• Early evolutionists

Valid cultural description

• Concise, Complete, Accurate

• Embossed on theory (Functionalism, cultural relativists)

• Standardisation and refining of the methods

Analytic / Critical / Structural

• Cultural grammar / Underlying structures

• Feminist

• Subaltran

Naturalist / Reflexive / creative• Description as the prime goal

• Against interpretation / against search for laws

• Importance of contextual, emic meanings, explaining the exceptions and indeterminants

• In the form of dialogue, collaborative, multiple voices, non-linear

• Questioning superiority of research over common sense

• Agency

• Uncertainty of adequate representation of reality.

• Not privileging the interpretation of the researcher

• Impossibility of a single comprehensive paradigm.

• Researcher is part of the social world being studied.

Must watch movies

• 12 Angry man

• Rashomon

• The invention of lying

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