Ethnography
Ethnographic research
 

Although many people believe ethnography to be an esoteric research method; it is in fact an holistic method which uses many existing tools. An ethnographer will use many qualitative methods in his/her research. The primary method is 'participant observation' but ethnographers are equally skilled in all areas of qualitative research and will mix and match methods to suit a particular project.

1) Context Focus Groups
2) Ethnography / Cross-cultural analysis
3) Participant Observation
4) Person-centred Interviews
5) Surveys
6) Reflexive/Photo/Video Diaries

*The secret ingredient is ANTHROPOLOGY. Without an anthropological training, a researcher is unlikely to know how to analyse the data they are collecting during ethnographic research. You wouldn't give statistical data to someone untrained in mathematics, similarly you are best off giving ethnographic data to an anthropologist.

 

Context Focus Groups
Focus groups can be excellent at producing a lot of very quotable data very quickly. They can also be designed to produce argument and discussion. However, focus groups can also tend to feel samey and often participants with lots to say cannot make themselves heard. We have a unique way of running focus groups which takes participants out of the usual focus group context using scenarios in which they must think original thoughts and come up with unrehearsed ideas and opinions. In this way we can put context back into the groups and produce much more exciting insights than just a list of likes and dislikes.

Ethnography
Ethnography is two things: research and analysis. An ethnography is the final output: a map of the lives of those you are studying. It is a method developed by anthropologists to understand people within social and cultural contexts all over the globe. Internationality and cross cultural analysis is fundamental to ethnography!. We immerse ourselves in people's lives to better understand their behaviours thoughts, words, and interactions with their environments. It is important to remember that what people say they do and what they actually do are rarely the same thing. Our researchers will observe, participate and record changes in mood, attitude, behaviour and opinion over time. This is the only way we can understand the points of view of the people we are studying.

Participant Observation
The exact nature of participatory research will change with cultural and practical sensitivities, but commonly involves living, eating, chatting and working with those we study to get a full view of their daily lives. Sometimes these periods of fieldwork are called 'ethnographies' or 'mini-ethnographies' (depending on length). Our researchers have carried out fieldwork like this in all manner of contexts from the insides of large companies looking at organisational cultures, to people's homes and workplaces and even in villages and cities in China, Africa and India.

Person-centred Interviews
There are many ways of conducting an interview: face-to-face, phone based, semi-structured, structured or even conversational (such as those which try to gain 'life histories'). Each interview method should be designed and implemented in such a way as to allow the interviewee to express answers in their own way and from their own point of view. We will design interviews which get to the heart of the questions you want answered and elicit the most interesting and thoughtful answers from those we are working with.

Surveys
Surveys are often considered to be the domain solely of quantitative researchers. In fact, qual researchers and ethnographers can and do use and develop surveys either to enhance their qualitative research or in turn, use their research to refine survey questions and structures. We offer three specific types of work in relation to surveys. 1) Survey development - we will design large scale survey questions based on qualitative research. 2) Surveying - we do conduct surveys ourseles - both large and small scale. We work closely with quant experts. 3) Survey validation - qualitative research can both confirm and show up shortcomings in existing survey data.

Reflexive/Photo/Video Diaries
Reflexive diaries, online journals, video and photo diaries are an innovative and fun way by which informants can show the researcher a situation from their perspective. The informants are given cameras, or tasks and asked to record things that represent the key issues concerning them. These images and thoughts form the basis of follow-up interviews where the participants explain to the researcher the meanings of the records, videos, photos they took. These kinds of methods also force the participants to be imagaintive and also produce some good looking and clear outputs for our clients.