SOC221H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Participant Observation, Ethnography, Grounded Theory
Document Summary
Field research can be used as either exploratory, explanatory, or descriptive; but most of the explanations are not of causal type by of the type whats really going on its making things less obscure and more interpretable. Deductive theory testing: start with abstract knowledge and then develop hypotheses where you then (test top down) Inductive: better for generating new concepts or ideas; going from bottom up like field research. Ethnography: a specialized term to a kind of field research; field meaning anywhere where social interactions/social life happens naturally. Ethnography is more narrow and refers to the method of once in the field, taking detailed observations and trying to describe as much of the observation as possible; descriptions that describe natural interactions even if the researcher wasn"t there. Here you see, holistically, the entire social interaction in a certain setting with a certain group. Participant observation: when doing ethnography you"re also participating in this.
