Ethnography As A Qualitative Study

The term ethnography listed among the categories of qualitative study is a compound word derived from the word ethnos (nation), and grapho (I write), and hence is the study peculiar to the science of ethnology. This discipline of ethnology is a subfield of anthropology, and has its history embedded in the latter. Ethnology compares and analyses the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between people cultures and social structures (Kollár, 1783). Following Brewer (2000), he describes ethnography as a qualitative study that employs more than one approach for the theoretical framework that fit procedures: questionnaires, interviews, personal documents, experiments, surveys, statistical inference, sampling and new forms of

The Smithsonian Institution was a big supporter of anthropological research stated in 1846. Later the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 began to gather information on Indians. Frank Boas, a German researcher did much to further ethnography in the late 1800'.s He and his students dominated the field in the early 1900's in America. The development of ethnography as a qualitative field derived through the four-field academic concern with Boas’ biological, social, and anthropological work. As a professor at Columbia University in New York City from 1899 until his retirement in 1937, he helped define the discipline and trained many of the most prominent American anthropologists of the 20th century. Many of his students—including Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead—went on to establish anthropology departments at universities throughout the country, (Ellen,

Participant observation is a strategy of reflexive learning, and rather than a method of observation it describes as a continuum of between the researcher’s participation and his/her observation. Participant observation may be described as researchers’ involvement as members of the studied culture, group, or setting, and usually roles are adopted that conform to the particular setting. The aim is for the researcher to gain more proximate experience of the culture's practices, motivations,