Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 87

The approaches of both Laud Humphreys and Li and his colleagues in China were forms of ethnography, a type of fieldwork, or first-hand study of people, using participant observation and/or interviews as the main research methods. Here, the investigator hangs out, works or lives with a group, organization or community and sometimes plays a direct part in their activities.

Where it is successful, ethnography provides information on the behaviour of people in groups, organizations and communities as well as on how those people understand their own behaviour. Once we see how things look from inside a given group, we can gain a better understanding, not only of that group but also of social processes that transcend the situation under study. Ethnography is one of a number of qualitative research methods used in sociology that aim to gain an in-depth knowledge and understanding of relatively small-scale social phenomena.

In the traditional works of ethnography, accounts were presented without much information about the researchers themselves being included, as it was thought that an ethnographer could present objective accounts of the societies they studied. In more recent years, ethnographers have increasingly discussed themselves and the nature of their connection to the people under study. Sometimes this reflexivity might be a matter of trying to consider how one’s own ethnicity, class or gender has influenced or affected the work, or how the power differences between observer and observed have impacted on the dialogue between them.

Table 2.2 Four widely used methods in sociological research

Research method	Strengths	Limitations
Fieldwork	Usually generates richer and more in-depth information than other methods.	Only successful with smaller groups or communities.
	Ethnography can provide a better understanding of social processes.	Findings might apply only to the groups studied. Not easy to generalize on the basis of a single fieldwork study.
Surveys	Make possible the efficient collection of data on large numbers of people.	The material gathered may be superficial; where a questionnaire is highly standardized, important differences between respondents’ viewpoints may be glossed over.
	Allow for precise comparisons to be made between the answers of respondents.	Responses may be what people profess to believe rather than what they actually believe.
Experiments	The influence of specific variables can be controlled by the investigator.	Many aspects of social life cannot be brought into the laboratory.
	Are usually easier for subsequent researchers to repeat.	The responses of those studied may be affected by their experimental situation.
Documentary research	Can provide source of in-depth materials as well as data on large numbers, depending on the type of documents studied.	The researcher is dependent on the sources that exist, which may be partial.
	Is often essential when a study is either wholly historical or has a defined historical dimension.	The sources may be difficult to interpret in terms of how far they represent real tendencies, as in the case of some official statistics.

Ethnographic studies do have limitations. Only fairly small groups or communities can be studied, and much depends on the skill of the individual researcher in gaining the confidence of the people involved. Without this skill the research is unlikely to get off the ground at all. The reverse is also possible. A researcher could begin to identify so closely with the group that he or she becomes too much of an ‘insider’ and loses the perspective of an outside observer. When so much rests on the skills of a particular individual, the study becomes hard to reproduce and thus the reliability of the findings may be called into question.

Sociologists also make use of focus groups, previously the preserve of marketing agencies and opinion pollsters. Focus groups are essentially facilitated ‘group discussions’ in which a small group of specifically selected individuals are gathered together to discuss a subject and exchange views. The researcher acts as moderator but also asks specific questions relating to the research study in order to direct the discussion. Because of their interactive and flexible nature, focus groups allow possible misunderstandings to be clarified, thereby increasing the validity of findings. However, critics point out that the researcher in a focus group is more participant than detached observer and may well influence the responses. There is therefore a danger that participants will perform according to the researcher’s expectations, though this issue is not unique to the focus group method and is something that all researchers have to consider.