AN100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Sociocultural Anthropology, Trobriand Islands, American Anthropologist
Document Summary
Think about what sometimes happens when your cellphone rings and you forget to check call displa(cid:455). Perhaps you are trying to relax, doing schoolwork, making dinner, or otherwise occupied. Because you do not know the individual who is asking you questions, you may have no feeling of interest or responsibility to engage with that person, or to be involved in the study. This lack of connection with the surveyor is one of the potential method- ological shortcomings of quantitative research. When a telemarketer asks you, for instance, to rank your responses to questions on a scale from 1 to 5, there is seldom any room to elaborate upon why you feel the way you do about a particular issue. Although anthropologists do make careful use of quantitative tools, such as surveys and census data, in their own research, these tools are usually a supplement to the qualitative research of ethnographic fieldwork.
