Naturalistic and Ethnographic Research in Nursing: Methods That Transform Educational Studies A Complete Guide

There is Complete Guide to Naturalistic and Ethnographic Research: Methods That Transform Educational Studies. Naturalistic and ethnographic research in education are qualitative methods that examine social phenomena in their natural context to understand shared cultural activities and their meaning from the perspective of individuals in the group.

The Complete Guide to Naturalistic and Ethnographic Research: Methods That Transform Educational Studies

Key methods include in-depth participant observation and informal interviews. An inductive, case-centered approach is used to generate a deep and holistic understanding, rather than testing predefined theories.

The Critical Distinctions Every Researcher Must Know

It is important to distinguish between matters of research design, methodology and instrumentation. Too often methods are confused with methodology, and methodology is confused with design. Part Two provided an introduction to design issues and this part examines different styles or kinds of research, separating them from methods—instruments to be used for data collection and analysis.

The Eight Main Styles of Educational Research

We identify eight main styles of educational research in this section. Although we recognize that these are by no means exhaustive, we suggest that this fairly covers the major styles of research methodology. The gamut of research styles is vast and this part illustrates the scope of what is available, embracing quantitative and qualitative research, together with small scale and large scale approaches.

Choosing the Right Research Approach: Fitness for Purpose

These enable the researcher to address the notion of ‘fitness for purpose’ in deciding the most appropriate style of research for the task in hand. This part deliberately returns to issues introduced in Part One, and suggests that, though styles of research can be located within particular research paradigms, this does not necessitate the researcher selecting a single paradigm only, nor does it advocate paradigm-driven research. Rather, the intention here is to shed light on styles of research from the paradigmatic contexts in which they are located.

Recent Developments in Research Methodology

To do this we have introduced considerable new material into this part, for example on naturalistic and ethnographic research (including issues in data analysis), computer usage, action research as political praxis, the limits of statistical significance and the importance of effect size, the burgeoning scope of meta-analysis, event history analysis, Nominal Group Technique and Delphi techniques, recent developments in case study research, and issues in correlational research. The previous edition kept separate developmental research and surveys; this edition has brought them together as they are mutually informing.

Naturalistic and Ethnographic Research: Core Elements and Principles

Six Naturalistic and ethnographic research Elements of naturalistic inquiry

Elements of naturalistic inquiry indicated that several approaches to educational research are contained in the paradigm of qualitative, naturalistic and ethno graphic research.

Key Characteristics of Naturalistic Research Paradigm

The characteristics of that paradigm (Boas, 1943; Blumer, 1969; Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Woods, 1992; LeCompte and Preissle, 1993) include:

Human Meaning-Making and Social Context

Humans actively construct their own meanings of situations
Meaning arises out of social situations and is handled through interpretive processes
Behaviour and, thereby, data are socially situated, context-related, context-dependent and context-rich. To understand a situation re searchers need to understand the context because situations affect behaviour and perspectives and vice versa

Multiple Realities and Interactive Knowledge

Realities are multiple, constructed and holistic
Knower and know are interactive, inseparable
Only time- and context-bound working hypotheses (idiographic statements) are possible
All entities are in a state of mutual simultaneous shaping, so that it is impossible to distinguish causes from effects

The Value-Bound Nature of Naturalistic Inquiry

Inquiry is value-bound
Inquiries are influenced by inquirer values as expressed in the choice of a problem, evaluand, or policy option, and in the framing, bounding, and focusing of that problem, evaluand or policy option
Inquiry is influenced by the choice of the paradigm that guides the investigation into the problem

How Values Influence Research

Inquiry is influenced by the choice of the substantive theory utilized to guide the collection and analysis of data and in the interpretation of findings
Inquiry is influenced by the values that in here in the context

Achieving Value Resonance

Inquiry is either value-resident (reinforcing or congruent) or value-dissonant (conflicting). Problem, evaluand, or policy option, paradigm, theory, and context must exhibit congruence (value-resonance) if the inquiry is to produce meaningful results

Essential Elements of Naturalistic Research

Research must include ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973) of the contextualized behavior
The attribution of meaning is continuous and evolving over time
People are deliberate, intentional and creative in their actions
History and biography intersect we create our own futures but not necessarily in situations of our own choosing

The Participant Perspective

Social research needs to examine situations through the eyes of the participants the task of ethnographies, as Malinowski (1922:25) observed, is to grasp the point of view of the native [sic], his [sic] view of the world and relation to his life
Researchers are the instruments of the research (Eisner, 1991)

Research Process Characteristics

Researchers generate rather than test hypotheses
Researchers do not know in advance what they will see or what they will look for
Humans are anticipatory beings
Human phenomena seem to require even more conditional stipulations than do other kinds
Meanings and understandings replace proof
Generalizability is interpreted as generalizability to identifiable, specific set tings and subjects rather than universally
Situations are unique
The processes of research and behaviour are as important as the outcomes
People, situations, events and objects have meaning conferred upon them rather than possessing their own intrinsic meaning

Natural Settings and Multiple Interpretations

Social research should be conducted in natural, uncontrived, real world settings with as little intrusiveness as possible by the re searcher
Social reality, experiences and social phenomena are capable of multiple, sometimes contradictory interpretations and are available to us through social interaction
All factors, rather than a limited number of variables, have to be taken into account

Inductive Analysis and Theory Development

Data are analysed inductively, with constructs deriving from the data during the research
Theory generation is derivative—grounded (Glaser and Strauss, 1967)—the data suggest the theory rather than vice versa.

Lincoln and Guba’s Implementation Framework

Lincoln and Guba (1985:39–43) tease out the implications of these axioms:

Studies must be set in their natural settings as context is heavily implicated in meaning
Humans are the research instrument
Utilization of tacit knowledge is inescapable
Qualitative methods sit more comfortably than quantitative methods with the notion of the human-as-instrument

Sampling and Analysis

Purposive sampling enables the full scope of issues to be explored
Data analysis is inductive rather than a priori and deductive
Theory emerges rather than is pre-ordinate. A priori theory is replaced by grounded theory
Research designs emerge over time (and as the sampling changes over time)

Reporting and Interpretation

The outcomes of the research are negotiated
The natural mode of reporting is the case study
Nomothetic interpretation is replaced by idiographic interpretation
Applications are tentative and pragmatic
The focus of the study determines its boundaries
Trustworthiness and its components replace more conventional views of reliability and validity

Understanding Ethnographic Research

LeCompte and Preissle (1993) suggest that ethno graphic research is a process involving methods of inquiry, an outcome and a resultant record of the inquiry. The intention of the research is to create as vivid a reconstruction as possible of the culture or groups being studied (p. 235).

Purposes of Ethnographic Research

That said, there are several purposes of qualitative research, for example, description and reporting, the creation of key concepts, theory generation and testing.

Key Elements of Ethnographic Approaches

LeCompte and Preissle (1993) indicate several key elements of ethnographic approaches:

Data Collection and Participant Perspectives

Phenomenological data are elicited
The world view of the participants is investigated and represented—their ‘definition of the situation’ (Thomas, 1923)
Meanings are accorded to phenomena by both the researcher and the participants; the process of research, therefore is hermeneutic, un covering meanings (Lecompte and Preissle, 1993:31–2)
The constructs of the participants are used to structure the investigation

Natural Settings and Observation

Empirical data are gathered in their naturalistic setting (unlike laboratories or in controlled settings as in other forms of research where variables are manipulated)
Observational techniques are used extensively (both participant and non-participant) to acquire data on real-life settings
The research is holistic, that is, it seeks a description and interpretation of ‘total phenomena

Analysis and Theory Development

There is a move from description and data to inference, explanation, suggestions of causation, and theory generation
Methods are ‘multimodal’ and the ethnographer is a ‘methodological omnivore’ (ibid.: 232).

What Ethnographies Involve: Core Activities

Hitchcock and Hughes (1989:52–3) suggest that ethnographies involve:

Cultural knowledge production

The production of descriptive cultural knowledge of a group
The description of activities in relation to a particular cultural context from the point of view of the members of that group themselves
The production of a list of features constitutive of membership in a group or culture
The description and analysis of patterns of social interaction
The provision as far as possible of ‘insider accounts
The development of theory.

Ethnographic vs. Positivist Approaches: Key Differences

There are several key differences between this approach and that of the positivists to whom we made reference.

Fundamental Philosophical Distinctions

LeCompte and Preissle (ibid.: 39–44) suggest that ethnographic approaches are concerned more with description rather than prediction, induction rather than deduction, generation rather than verification of theory, construction rather than enumeration, and subjectivities rather than objective knowledge.

Emic vs. Etic Approaches

With regard to the latter the authors distinguish between emic approaches (as in the term ‘phonemic’, where the concern is to catch the subjective meanings placed on situations by participants) and etic approaches (as in the term ‘phonetic’, where the intention is to identify and understand the objective or researcher’s meaning and constructions of a situation).

Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative Research

That said, Woods (1992) argues that some differences between quantitative and qualitative research have been exaggerated.

Overcoming False Dichotomies

He proposes, for example , that the 1970s witnessed an unproductive dichotomy between the two, the former being seen as strictly in the hypothetic-deductive mode (testing theories) and the latter being seen as the inductive method used for generating theory.

Integrated Approaches

He suggests that the epistemological contrast between the two is over stated, as qualitative techniques can be used both for generating and testing theories. Indeed Dobbert and Kurth-Schai (1992) urge ethnographic approaches to become not only more systematic but to study and address regularities in social behavior and social structure (pp. 94–5).

Balancing Diversity and Patterns

The task of ethnographers is to balance a commitment to catch the diversity, variability, creativity, individuality, uniqueness and spontaneity of social interactions (e.g. by ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973)) with a commitment to the task of social science to seek regularities, order and patterns within such diversity (ibid.: 150). As Durkheim noted, there are ‘social facts’.

Addressing Generalizability in Ethnographic Research

Following this line, it is possible, therefore, to suggest that ethnographic research can address issues of generalizability—a tenet of positivist research—interpreted as ‘comparability’ and ‘translatability’ (LeCompte and Preissle, 1992:47).

Comparability

For comparability the characteristics of the group that is being studied need to be made explicit so that readers can compare them with other similar or dissimilar groups.

Translatability

For translatability the analytic categories used in the research as well as the characteristics of the groups are made explicit so that meaningful comparisons can be made to other groups and disciplines.

Hallmarks of Effective Ethnographic Research

Spindler and Spindler (1992:72–4) put forward several hallmarks of effective ethnographies:

Observational Excellence

Observations have contextual relevance, both in the immediate setting in which behaviour is observed and in further contexts beyond.
Hypotheses emerge in situ as the study develops in the observed setting.
Observation is prolonged and often repetitive. Events and series of events are observed more than once to establish reliability in the observational data.

Participant Understanding

Inferences from observation and various forms of ethnographic inquiry are used to address insiders’ views of reality.
A major part of the ethnographic task is to elicit sociocultural knowledge from participants, rendering social behaviour comprehensible.

Methodological Rigor

Instruments, schedules, codes, agenda for interviews, questionnaires, etc. should be generated in situ, and should derive from observation and ethnographic inquiry.
A transcultural, comparative perspective is usually present, although often it is an unstated assumption, and cultural variation (over space and time) is natural.
Some sociocultural knowledge that affects behaviour and communication under study is tacit/implicit, and may not be known even to participants or known ambiguously to others. It follows that one task for an ethnography is to make explicit to readers what is tacit/ implicit to informants.

Ethical and Technical Considerations

The ethnographic interviewer should not frame or predetermine responses by the kinds of questions that are asked, because the in formants themselves have the emic, native cultural knowledge.
In order to collect as much live data as possible, any technical device may be used.
The ethnographer’s presence should be declared and his or her personal, social and interactional position in the situation should be described.

The Researcher as Human Instrument

With ‘mutual shaping and interaction’ between the researcher and participants taking place (Lin coln and Guba, 1985:155) the researcher be comes, as it were, the ‘human instrument’ in the research (ibid.: 187), building on her tacit knowledge in addition to her prepositional knowledge, using methods that sit comfortably with human inquiry, e.g. observations, interviews, documentary analysis and ‘unobtrusive’ methods (ibid.: 187).

The advantage of the ‘human instrument’ is her adaptability, responsiveness, knowledge, ability to handle sensitive matters, ability to see the whole picture, ability to clarify and summarize, to explore, to analyze, to examine atypical or idiosyncratic responses (ibid.: 193–4).

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