Enhanced Ethnographic Methods: Audiovisual Techniques, Focused Group Interviews, and Elicitation

Ethnographer's Toolkit #3

by Jean J. Schensul, Margaret Diane LeCompte, Bonnie K. Nastasi

In addition to the traditional use of participant observation, interviews, and surveys, qualitative researchers have developed a variety of other methods to obtain information in their studies. Visual data from film and still photographs are now supplemented with video and computer techniques and are used in many settings. Focused group interviews, once in the domain of market researchers, are now regularly used by qualitative researchers as well. Elicitation techniques, such as triads, pile sorts, and freelists, originally developed by cognitive anthropologists have been widely adopted to help understand the inner workings of the members of a group. In this brief volume, these three sets of methods are explained in simple, practical language. The authors describe when and how to use these sets of techniques for community research, market research, and formative evaluation and other health, social welfare, and educational settings both domestically and internationally.

Genres: Ethnography, Anthropology, Research

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 19, 1999

About the author

Jean J. Schensul is a medical anthropologist and senior scientist at The Institute for Community Research, in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Schensul is most notable for her research on HIV/AIDS prevention and other health-related research in the United States, as well as her extensive writing on ethnographic research methods. She has made notable contributions to the field of applied anthropology, with her work on structural interventions to health disparities leading to the development of new organizations, community research partnerships, and community/university associations. Schensul’s work has been dedicated to community-based research on topics such as senior health, education, and substance abuse, among others.