For this activity, you are tasked with designing a field research or ethnographic study examining one of the following:
Group membership/group dynamics in substance use/abuse support groups
Computer usage among elderly adults
Educational access among rural children
Work experiences among low-income/hourly wage workers
You must choose to include one of the phenomena listed above for your study.
Step 1: Introduction
Once youve chosen your topic of study, you should begin your assignment by identifying your context of interest and present a rationale or justification for this context. You should also provide a conceptual definition for your variable (group membership, computer usage, educational access, or work experiences) in this context. In other words, what does it mean to you and how do you want to approach it for study in your field research?
For example, if you choose to study work experiences of low-income workers, you might identify your context of interest as Walmart and you should provide a rationale for why Walmart is a useful context in which to study work experiences of low-income workers. You should also provide a conceptual definition of work experiences as it relates to studying Walmart employees. Does work experiences constitute experiences that take place only inside the store or do you want to have a more expansive understanding of how work experiences are observed to impact peoples relationships with their spouses (or children), etc?
You should articulate at least one research question you have regarding your chosen topic. You should also outline a justification for why your topic is relevant and interesting for research (rememberthis justification should be rooted in course concepts such as novelty, contributions to an ongoing discussion, impact, etc which we discussed in Unit 1).
Step 2: Methods
Discuss your proposed field research. Identify your specific field site (the specific site that you will actually visit to collect your data for example, which specific Walmart(s) will you conduct field research in?) as well as your plan for gathering participants. You should discuss how you will identify your informants. You should also articulate the level of access you hope to attain.
For example, if you are studying low-income workers at Walmart, do you plan to study how the formalized rules of Walmart influence workers experiences at work? Or do you plan to study how workers work experiences impact areas of their home life outside of work? These two goals are quite different and will likely require a different level of access to the organization: the first goal may require some access to Walmart managers and administrative staff while the second may not.
Discuss at length what your approach will be regarding the researcher/ participant relationship. In this discussion, make sure to address any issues of deception that might be relevant. You should also discuss issues of objectivity and power as they relate to your research context: How will you attempt to remain objective when describing what you observe (and developing possible explanations) and how will you identify and address issues of power? Identify at least three essential questions you will ask yourself as a researcher in this context (these questions should reflect issues of reflexivity common to ethnographic research), and explain how you will work to acknowledge your own perspective and bias in the research. These questions should be grounded in the specifics of your study context and who you and your participants are. Additionally, you should discuss at least two criteria for how you will know you have spent enough time in the community/context to successfully complete your ethnography.
Step 3: Critique
What are the overall weaknesses in your design? What are its strengths? Discuss the merits of your study based in concepts from class (such as validity, reliability, generalizability, representativeness, etc.). Outline at least two reasons why this design is superior to a quantitative research design (e.g., survey or experimental design) for answering your specific research question.
