Essential Ethnographic Methods: A Mixed Methods Approach

Ethnographer's Toolkit #3

by Jean J. Schensul

Essential Ethnographic Methods introduces the fundamental, face-to-face data collection tools that ethnographers and other qualitative researchers use on a regular basis. It provides ethnographers with tools to answer the principal ethnographic questions about setting, participants, activities, behavior, and more. The essential "mixed" methods for collecting data include open-ended and focused listening, questioning strategies, participant and non-participant observation, recording techniques, visual recall, mapping the environments and contexts in which participant behavior occurs, and engaging in ethnographically informed survey research. Because these data collection strategies require ethnographers to become involved in the local cultural setting and to acquire their experience through hands-on experience, the essential tools also allow them to learn about new situations from the perspective of an "insider." With these detailed instructions, the quality and scope of the data ethnographers collect are sure to be improved.

Genres: Ethnography, Anthropology, Research

386 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.