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There are a range of methods for generating data in ethnographic research. Hence, ethnographic research design includes making choices about data types and ways of generating those data. To ‘generate’ is a term used here with purpose and on purpose. The term ‘data collection’ implies that there are data to be collected; data which are already ‘out there’, ripe and ready to be harvested. Data collection can sound like rather a passive process, with a neutral researcher moving through a field as a data collector. This does a disservice to the processes and practices of ethnography, to the role of the ethnographer researcher and indeed to the complexities of social life. Data which might tell us something about the social world, and enable us to develop understandings about the life worlds of social actors demand a more active engagement on the part of the researcher. Data are not ‘there’, already in existence, simply to be collected up, organized and stored. Rather, ethnographic data are generated through various kinds of interaction with a social setting and/or social actors, crafted through our research practices. Indeed ethnographic data are all, in some way or another, co-productions between researchers, people in the field and the field itself. Data are made not caught.

The starting point for data generation for much ethnographic research is participant observation. This is where the researcher becomes a participant in the setting to a greater or lesser extent, in order to observe and record what is happening. Data in these circumstances, usually taking the form of fieldnotes, are made in situ during observation where possible, and expanded and developed after fieldwork. These data then are jottings and detailed notes, serving as a re-presentation of what has happened in the field. Participant observation is often held up as the gold standard for ethnographic data collection (see Atkinson and Coffey, 2002) and most clearly embodies key ethnographic research principles and the ethnographic spirit – being there, experiencing, watching, listening and feeling in order to understand and make sense. In ethnography there are different degrees to which participation in a setting is possible or desirable on the part of the researcher (see Gold, 1958, for a classical typology of researcher roles from participant through to observer; see also Chapter 5, this volume).

Participant observation can generate rich, layered data, but it can also demand a lengthy time commitment – sometimes stretching over several weeks, months, years or even decades (see Fowler and Hardesty, 1994; Okely and Callaway, 1992). This may influence the research design decisions that might or can be made. Time is an important factor to bear in mind. So too is the extent to which access to undertake participant observation can be successfully negotiated, as well as the ease or difficulty with which it might be possible to conduct observational fieldwork. In some settings, for example, being a participant observer in the setting may be dangerous, risky or impossible. It is worth noting here, however, that there is a long tradition of ethnographic participant observational fieldwork in settings that might have been initially considered difficult to access or dangerous or risky (see Nilan, 2002; Tewksbury, 2009).

Alongside, in addition to, or instead of participant observation, there are a range of other methods that usefully form part of the ethnographer’s data generation tool kit. Ethnographic interviewing – conversations with a purpose (Burgess, 1984; see Brinkmann and Kvale, 2018) – is a widely used method, both taking advantage of and being situated within the narrative turn within the social sciences (Czarniawska, 2004). Ethnographic interviewing builds on the anthropological approach to fieldwork – asking questions of social actors in the context of their everyday experiences, as part of participant observation. Interviewing, though, can also be utilized as an alternative to participant observation. Research can be ethnographic and be conducted through a series of extended interviews as conversations, and planned as such, recorded manually or digitally. Film also has a long history within ethnographic research, from the documentary style anthropological films of the early to mid-twentieth century through to a wider ranging visual revolution of the last few decades where still, moving and digital media have served to enhance and extend the repertoire of the ethnographic researcher for generating data for analysis. Ethnographic research design can include planning to generate researcher-produced still and moving images, supporting participants to create their own images, as well as gathering images of settings already created by participants or others (such visual data can include photographs and film, but also maps, pictures, digital media and other art forms). These approaches provide opportunities for differently generating data about social worlds. It is worthy of note here that digital technologies have also made it easier to capture the sounds of settings. Soundscapes can add a further sensory exploration of social life; noise and sound are very pertinent ways in which we experience and undertake our daily lives (Hall et al., 2008). The digital age has also brought with it new opportunities for data generation in ethnographic research. The digital landscape that encompasses websites, email communication, mobile phone technologies, geographical and mapping applications and social media means that there are a variety of ways in which social settings and social life are now digitally experienced, and through which researchers can engage with/in research settings. Ethnographic data can be gathered through participation in and engagement with these mediated technologies. This includes, for example, participant observation of virtual worlds, mobile and virtual interviews and the analysis of digital artefacts and documents of social life (Hine, 2000; Kozinets, 2009).

Gathering and generating digital data is an important way in which we can explore the documentary realities of the social settings we seek to understand. Documents, whether they be digital or otherwise, are also an important part of the ethnographic data repertoire and should be seriously considered in ethnographic research design. Early ethnographic research drawing on the anthropological tradition, was often undertaken in non-literate societies; while such societies did not rely on written texts, their daily lives were still documented through paintings, art work and material artefacts; in contemporary societies documents of various kinds can and do serve important functions, and can be used as part of the ways in which we seek to gain understandings about how a setting or organization operates and is organized, and how lives are lived (Plummer, 2001). As May notes, ‘documents read as the sedimentation of social practices’ and also ‘constitute particular readings of social events’ (2001, p. 176). Ethnographic researchers do not always recognize the potential of studying and generating documents and texts as data. In ethnographic research design it can be useful to consider the potential and possibilities of documents as data, not just to provide background to a setting but also as ways of understanding social practice.

In relation to research design, the process of data generation can be approached in two ways in ethnography. These approaches are not mutually exclusive. An ethnographic project can be designed with methods for data generation explicitly foregrounded and planned. For example, a research project can be planned from the outset to undertake ethnographic interviews with a number of key informants, or with the explicit intention of generating a series of co-produced photographs, or with a clear plan to engage explicitly in participant observation appropriately signalled during access discussions with a research site. Equally, an ethnographic project can be initiated rather more broadly, with perhaps no more than a general plan to visit the setting and undertake some level of participant observation, open to the possibilities of utilizing complementary methods should the opportunity or perceived need arise. So, for example, through participating in the daily life of a setting it may become apparent that the sounds of a setting appear to offer particularly evocative ways of understanding and making sense of that setting, and hence soundscapes might become part of the data collection repertoire for the project. Or perhaps there occurs, through sustained engagement in the field, the opportunity to gather or generate photographic records of a setting; or it begins to seem relevant or important to complement observations and informal conversations with more formally planned and scheduled ethnographic interviews. Ethnographic data collection is always, at least in part, an iterative process, and justifiably so. It is helpful to think of ethnographic research design as a cyclical rather than a linear process, where data collection strategies are interwoven with the analytical attention we give our data and the ideas we generate during fieldwork (see Flick, 2018a).