COMM 3002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Ethnography, Deductive Reasoning

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 3002
• Professor: Andre Turcotte

Document Summary

Field research, ethnography, or participant-observation research is a qualitative research approach in which a researcher directly observes and participates in small-scale social settings in the present time and in the researcher"s home culture. In the social sciences, anthropologists are especially associated with ethnographic field research and have contributed to its development as a scientific technique. Ethnographic field research is often a theory-generating activity researchers make initial observations; develop tentative general conclusions that suggest particular types of further observations; make those observations and revise their conclusions. This approach combines inductive and deductive reasoning. One of the key strengths of ethnographic field research is how comprehensive a perspective it can give researchers. One key dimension of ethnographic field research is that the practice places researchers in the midst of whatever it is they study. Study of attitudes and behaviours best understood in their natural setting. Social processes over time (campus demonstrations, labour negotiations, courtroom proceedings, etc. )