SOCI 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Ethnomethodology, Participant Observation, Grounded Theory
22 Feb 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Field research: social research probing social life in its natural habitat: it is being in the social environment of the people you want to study. The observations cover a wide range, such as buildings, roads, pathways, businesses, institutions, music, art work, natural objects such as animals and plants, and, most importantly, the people you are most interested in studying. Field research yields mainly qualitative data, but quantitative data can also be gathered. In anthropology, it is called ethnography (from the greek ethnos meaning people and writing). Field research is well suited for the study of social processes over time. Grounded theory: field research incorporates a number of data-gathering techniques that are used to build theory from observations. Field research is the basis of naturalism: an approach to field research based on the assumption that an objective social reality exists and can be observed and reported accurately (contrast: phenomenology or ethnomethodology).
