How to do qualitative research Essay

Launch: Qualitative studies about asking questions and gathering information through terms, to then later analyze. One way of doing this is usually through ethnography. But before any kind of research can be carried out, there must be an investigation question. In this case, “Do the Olympics trigger their viewers to act totally different to what would be the norm when they are viewing any other well-liked TV show? ” This issue was decided to clearly outline the process of ethnography, and how it truly is useful in finding out the information necessary to answer this kind of research question.

Methodology: A great ethnography is “A Analysis approach to learning the culture of your group (patterns of behaviour/attitudes, how they create meaning), simply by immersing oneself in the actions of the specific group during time and then writing up a detailed summary. ” (Savage 3). An ethnographic approach involves being engaged in and listening to conversations, taking regular paperwork and collecting “artifacts” of the group being studied (Savage 7). All of these things later help out with writing up a summary of results that where gathered in the ethnography.

You will find two primary types of ethnography, initial there is a great overt ethnography where the members are informed they are becoming observed. This sort of ethnography is most commonly used and it is less risky because the members are aware of the research that is happening. The other type is usually covert.

This is how the specialist is unfamiliar by the individuals (Savage 10). The ethnography done regarding whether the Olympics change the way an audience acts is a covert ethnography. The topics were unacquainted with the investigator and the reality they were becoming studied and watched TELEVISION as they normally would. Although this examine was in a closed placing, there is always a chance of a risk when doing a covert examine, because among the participants may well not want to be researched (Savage 9-10). Another important aspect of doing an ethnography is gaining gain access to.

Gaining gain access to all depends on whether it is a closed establishing or an open setting. Open up settings will be public settings are happen to be fairly easy to reach. They incorporate places like a street nook, or a movie theatre lobby, or perhaps city council meetings (Savage 9).

Closed settings happen to be non-public configurations that are harder to gain access to mainly because they usually require a contact, or perhaps permission to find yourself in. Closed configurations include households, firms, doctors offices and political functions (Savage 9). These are spots that access is merely granted in people who have permission. Although, in many instances, a lot of groups which might be in a sealed setting, have got both open and sealed settings, and so if agreement was not awarded, then there would still be an opportunity intended for an ethnography when the group is in an open setting.

The ethnography that was carried out took place within a closed placing and get was awarded due to this being at the researchers house. This made it easy to gain access without needing to worry about any kind of limits that may sometimes come with closed adjustments. Summary of Findings With this topic, one would find that applying ethnography could be the best way to travel about producing a research project about the Olympics leading to an audience to act differently then when they observe other well-known TV shows.

It is because the study was about to view two different settings, one of topics watching a popular TV show (American Idol), and one of themes watching the Olympic Games. This allowed for an excellent comparison involving the two, to make answering your research question easier than you think. While undertaking the ethnography in both settings, like a “fly for the wall” allowed the researcher to observe how a subjects served in equally situations without being noticed. The setting as well helped in disguising the researcher, for the reason that subjects had been just told it was research, or these were used to the researcher becoming on the computer anyhow. If this study were to be conducted while an in-depth interview, the results would be quite different.

The interviewee might not exactly know how that they react the moment they’re watching television, or may not observe that they take action differently and vise versa, which would then make it difficult to have the desired data. This would put the study at a halt because not any relevant information would have recently been gathered. Performing an ethnography is the only way to go about answering this kind of research problem.

There is a particular level of control that comes with performing an ethnography for this query because the researcher is unfamiliar, this as well ensures that those men are operating the way the normally would and not acting the way the think they must act. Which can be sometimes the truth when people will be told they are really being researched. Also, (in this case) the subjects are somewhat being forced to watch the desired television show.

This kind of ensures that the subjects are coming in contact with the same present and can permit more specific exploration. Ethnography is likewise useful as it allows for change. If the ethnography were to go about, there might most likely be a little more television shows to compare the Olympics to, but in this case, the research question could be simplified to “Do the Olympics cause their very own audience to act differently than if they are watching American Idol? “. If the research were to continue, because it is a great ethnography with multiple topics for each show, there is place for alter, and the info that was already collected might still be useful.

Whereas in the event that an in-depth interview was to carried out, and data was collected there is no guarantee that each subject matter watches the same television shows in order to compare among the list of different subject that were interviewed. Key Learnings After opting for an ethnography to answer this research problem, some things started to be quite clear. Initial, when executing a hidden ethnography, it is sometimes not so easy to remain unidentified to every subject matter, and it is difficult to judge what exactly they are thinking or what they will perform if these were to find out. This kind of raised problem of what should the researcher do if they happen to be in a shut setting that they cannot keep and an interest did not desire to be studied and was very angry?

Generally in most closed environment situations, the probabilities are that it may not be considered a covert ethnography, but after that covert closed setting ethnography, it was made clear that the location of exploration should not be made known for the protection of the researcher. This leads to one other question about ethics and who needs to be harmed in that case. If the researcher is in risk of being harmed if they were to tell this issue that they ended uphad been studied, and if the specialist did not inform the subject, it is considered unethical because the subject matter is being humiliated to. Does this issue in that case become a problem of choosing the greater good?

Whereby, who chooses what the better good is usually? Second, when doing an ethnography there is not always something useful to take note of. This causes ethnography to be very frustrating because the research must possible until they have all the info needed which might take a long time if absolutely nothing is happening. This kind of causes problems because there is zero guarantee that whatever will happen whatsoever that would ensure that the researcher answer their research question.

Summary: In speaking about using ethnography to answer problem of “Do the Olympics cause their particular audience to do something differently than when they are watching any other popular Television show? ” and what was learned, it is secure to conclude that ethnography is the foremost way to approach something like this. This really is largely because of the method getting more successful by gathering details than it’s alternative, also because there are a number of way that is can be performed to ensure the specialist is able to get the information necessary.