Question

An ethnographer spends 3 weeks in a new culture and then returns home to begin examining the data she collected. What is inappropriate about her method?

Answer 1

Ethnography as a method of qualitative research emphasises on in depth immersion into a culture, usually different from one’s own and to understand the processes or phenomena under investigation form the Emic viewpoint that is perspective of the native culture. In her investigation, the researcher may fall prey to errors of interpretation given that the time frame for data collection was very small as she spent only 3 weeks in a culture with which she is unfamiliar. Social scientists point out that the time frame in a valid ethnographic study depends on a number of considerations, the major being concerns about what the ethnographic objectives are. Thus, more complex "questionnaires" may require several weeks, even months. The amount of time also depends on how familiar with the setting or culture the ethnographer is. Since, the culture under the study is new to the ethnographer, her approach to the method can be argued to be inappropriate as she requires a Long-term, in-depth exploration over a substantial amount of time.