Every research demands central theme that provides a ground base for technical study. You can find systematic procedures for better understanding of a shift from one field of research to another. One of the fields of research is ethnographic studies. Ethnography is a study of culture and social organisations. You can study these aspects in a group as well as in the form of a community. The most common use of ethnography can be seen in exploring a cultural phenomenon. As a researcher of ethnography, you need to highlight a single culture from different angles. As per its importance, this article aims to discuss ethnographic studies in detail.
What is Ethnography Research Strategy?
In the life of humans, different cultures and their surroundings have great importance. You can find bundles of societies on earth with different cultures. In order to study all the aspects linked with human cultures, you have to go for the field of ethnography. In simple words, ethnography is a research strategy that works on the first-hand study of society. Other than ethnography, you can find many other ways to study the culture and society, but the difference is in approach. In other studies, you can only work with observations. The observation can be wrong in case you are inexperienced in research.
In contrast, ethnography is a systematic approach that focuses on literature review, methodology and proper data analysis. Human is a person that cannot be studied through lab experiments, but it requires an uncontrolled system. Also, there can be the use of so many complex techniques and approaches to study different matches. In terms of research, you can take it as a qualitative method to collect data and analyse it to get insights into the problem. You can also get dissertation help UK to get it done.
What is the Importance of Ethnographic Studies?
The main goals of ethnographic studies make it important for research. The goal of ethnography is to develop a sustainable set up in the society. The setup should not be temporary but long-lasting for society and its well-being. To achieve this goal, you need to go for a dynamic and complex factor of human life. It is an ethnography that provides you with a process to find social relations existing in society. Also, it is an ethnography that provides you with in-depth information about frequent social settings. You can get to know about the system that is providing strength to the positive culture of society. The opposite side is related to the factors that are destroying society drastically.
There is another thing that makes ethnographic studies important. Many research topics have so many complexities in terms of the problem’s nature. In such cases, the single research approach does not benefit up to a great extent. That is why you must go for ethnography to find the research problem’s best solution. The best example of such a research problem can be participant observation and interactive investigation.
List Down the Major Uses of Studies Related to Ethnography?
The use of ethnography can be seen in so many areas. Although the major use is related to culture, you still have to clarify that it is not limited to culture only. The uses of ethnographic studies are mentioned below:
- Whenever you have to investigate human behaviour, you can go for ethnography.
- At an organisational level, you can use it to evaluate employee performance.
- It can be used for different problems related to social sciences.
- You can better study cultures that are unfamiliar to society.
- The use of ethnography can be seen in behavioural sciences.
- As medical personnel, you can better observe things with ethnographic studies.
- The discussion on global issues can work well with the help of this approach.
Write Down the Advantages of Ethnographic Studies?
Following are some advantages of ethnographic studies:
- Ethnographic studies do not focus on a single culture, but studying other cultures existing in society is beneficial. The best example of ethnography is the study of an island. An ethnographer takes it as a great opportunity and collects the new and interesting facts that are part of human life. They do a critical evaluation of every happening. Also, the backend story of each culture matters a lot. It helps in better understanding of beliefs, traditions and norms of people. As a result of this study, you can broaden the horizon of people for new changes. People start accepting other traditions and behave well with diversity.
- In ethnography, you can find bundles of culture as well as several approaches to evaluate these cultures. Every approach aims to target a particular problem. You can use different approaches for a single problem. In this way, you can get better results from your study. You can also take it as the best way to explore more than one aspect of social life.
- One of the main advantages of ethnographic studies is at an organisational level. The small and large business sectors prefer to go for ethnography. This study helps in better understanding the potential customer. For any customer, his needs and interests have great importance. With ethnography, you can get access to their interest and needs. After that, you can hit the targeted point with relevant products and services.
- Besides the human culture, ethnographic studies play an important role in qualitative research. In qualitative research, you get the choice to go out of the box, and there is no limit to choices. The open-ended questions make it easy to discover the new features in detail. In ethnography, discovering anything does not matter until you find the proper investigation of the results.
Final Thoughts
By understanding the importance, uses and advantages of ethnographic studies, you can better evaluate the research problem. First, it helps you identify if the research problem needs this approach. Based on this identification, you can come up with reliable research results. You can find the details of society’s functions in a naturally occurring setting. Without basic information, you may have to deal with so many challenges. So, it is good to grasp the above-mentioned information before using the approach of ethnography.