Advantages Of Ethnography

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Ethnography studies the customs of a particular culture. For those who study culture, one popular research method is the participant observation method. Participant observation is a method used in ethnography. The goal of participant observation is to learn a culture through close interaction and personal observation with a particular group of individuals. To have close interaction with the group, the researcher will take the role of a “player” in the group. As a “player” they live in the community and camouflage themselves to be like the rest of the community. They may do what they do, live where they live, eat their food, speak their language(s), and engulf in the habits and customs of the group. Over a period of time, the “player” will pick …show more content…

Validity is one of the many advantages of participant observation research. When it comes to anthropology, it is challenging to have others validate your research. Anthropologists tend to avoid the cold scientific approaches and prefer a native style. Other researchers who view the study may not have the same accessibility to the particular research site due to permits, funding, travel, and other possible factors that include social, political, and economic turmoil. Therefore, it's important that an anthropologist does his/her best job to be as accurate in his/her reports as possible. With participant observation, the researcher can ensure validity by providing rich qualitative data that includes pictures of the fieldwork. These pictures will show how those being studied truly …show more content…

These methods can be quantitative or qualitative based. For quantitative research, the host is attentive to data collected from surveys, polls, and censuses. These surveys, polls, and censuses focuses on who the participants are, where they are from, and occurrences. This is different from participant observation as this method of collecting data limits the interaction of the host with the people and culture. Another method is comparative research. In comparative research two or more things are compared with each other to locate what differences and similarities lie between cultures, cultural practices, language, time, socioeconomic, etc. This differs from the participant observation method as it is looking only to compare what causes and effects differ over a period of