Ethnographic research 101

Ethnography is the study of a specific culture, both from an outsider’s perspective and an insider’s point of view. 

All sorts of different fields and industries use ethnographic research to understand the people they serve. It’s common in sociology, healthcare, education, nonprofit development, and yes—market research. 

In this post, you’ll learn about key ethnographic research methods, the risks of conducting this type of research, and when to consider doing it.

Purpose of ethnographic research

The purpose of ethnographic research is to uncover insights into cultures, groups, and communities. 

It’s an immersive type of research: the goal is to spend time as an outsider in the culture’s world, gathering qualitative data as you go. 

Effective ethnographic research means living among or observing the group you’re studying, often for long periods of time. Your goal is to collect information about the group’s social dynamics, rituals, and routines. You'll then use that qualitative data to make your own observations about those practices.

Then, you can use those observations to improve your business, industry, or field’s understanding of the people you studied. 

Here’s what ethnography is particularly useful for: 

• Understanding context: It provides context to the behaviors and practices of a group and helps explain the why behind peoples' actions.

• Exploring unfamiliar cultures: Ethnographic research offers insights into cultures or communities that are unfamiliar to the researcher, or even to the general public.

• Developing theories: The data gathered from ethnographic studies can help develop new theories or refine existing ones about human behavior and social interaction.

• Improving practices: In applied fields like education, healthcare, and marketing, ethnography can identify areas for improvement. Especially for any product or service that serves the community being researched. 

Ethnographic Research methods

There are a few different ways to conduct ethnographic research. We’ve included the standard research methods for ethnographic research, but we’re also including methods like surveys and focus groups. 

These are typically seen more often in market research, but we’ll show you how they can help with ethnographic research, too. 

Active participant

One of the most common ways to conduct ethnographic research is by becoming an active participant in the group you're studying.

The goal here is for you to get as close to being an insider as you can. The more immersion, the better: plenty of ethnographic researchers live in the communities they study. Or work in the field they’re studying. Sometimes for a few months. Other times for a year or more. It really all depends on the depth of information needed.

Let’s say a startup wants to develop budget-friendly medical equipment for nurses and medical assistants. The entrepreneurs behind the startup want to understand the daily struggles these workers face. 

One of the entrepreneurs agrees to get a certificate to become a medical assistant and land a job in the industry. Not for the money or career opportunities, but to study the medical field from an insider’s perspective. 

For the next year, this person takes detailed notes. By the end of their stint as a medical assistant, they have several ideas for products they know their colleagues would love. 

Of course, not everyone has the time or resources for active participation. That’s where some of the other methods for conducting ethnographic research come in. 

Passive observation

With passive observation, you’re essentially shadowing the people you’re studying instead of jumping in and working with them. 

Let's go back to the medical assistant example. Shadowing would mean observing the nurses and med assistants instead of going through all the work to obtain a degree and get a job in the field.  

It’s a lot less time- and labor-intensive than active participation, but since you’re an observer, you aren’t fully immersed in the culture you’re studying. 

Because of that, you may not get as complete a picture as you would with active participation. 

But we’ve got a tip to remedy that. Use some of the other methods of ethnographic research, like interviews and surveys, and you'll add a key layer of depth to your observations.

Interviews

There's nothing like sitting down and talking to someone, face to face, to understand their perspective on life.

Interviewing people is one of the best things you can do as part of active participation or passive observation. This is true whether you're an anthropologist or a market researcher.

One-on-one interviews can be as formal or informal as you like. Here are seven of the most important questions to ask while conducting an ethnographic research interview for market research.

1. Open-ended

• Purpose: Encourage detailed responses and give participants space to express themselves.

• Examples: "Can you describe your typical day at work?" "How do you usually decide which products to buy?"

2. Behavioral 

• Purpose: Understand specific actions and behaviors within a person’s natural context.

• Examples: "Can you walk me through the steps you take when you go grocery shopping?" "What do you do when you encounter a problem with a product?"

3. Descriptive

• Purpose: Get a clear picture of the participant's environment and routines.

• Examples: "What does your workspace look like?" "Can you describe how you use this product in your daily life?"

4. Experience-based

• Purpose: Explore past experiences that shape current behaviors and attitudes.

• Examples: "Tell me about a time when you had an exceptional customer service experience." "Have you ever stopped using a product because of a bad experience? What happened?"

5. Opinion and belief 

• Purpose: Understand the participant's values, beliefs, and attitudes.

• Examples: "What do you think makes a brand trustworthy?" "How important is sustainability to you when choosing products?"

6. Probing

• Purpose: Dive deeper into specific responses.

• Examples: "Can you tell me more about that?" "Why do you feel that way?" "What do you mean by that?"

7. Cultural and social context 

• Purpose: Understand the broader cultural influences on the participant's behaviors and attitudes.

• Examples: "How do your friends and family influence your purchasing decisions?" "What role does your community play in your day-to-day life?"

Surveys

Like interviews, surveys are an excellent way to gain deeper insights into both active and passive ethnographic studies. They can help with:

• Contextualizing findings: Surveys validate qualitative data by quantifying sentiments—for example, confirming how many community members prioritize sustainability when making purchases.

• Identifying trends: Active participation, passive observation, and interviews are important for studying individual behaviors. But surveys identify broader trends within a community or group of people in your target audience—like a widespread preference for a product feature.

• Complementing insights: Surveys can securely capture data on topics difficult to observe directly, such as income levels or health conditions.

• Validating hypotheses: You can test ethnographic hypotheses, like younger consumers' loyalty to specific brands, on a larger scale.

• Quantifying qualitative data: Surveys measure the prevalence of behaviors observed ethnographically, such as unique product uses in a community.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are a valuable tool for ethnographic research. Here's why: they provide a setting where people can discuss their experiences and perspectives together. These group discussions help researchers understand why people behave and think the way they do.

How? By observing how they interact with and influence each other.

Imagine you've spent time shadowing teachers at different schools. You're on the product development team for an educational supplies company. Your goal is to observe teachers as they work, identifying tools they love and tools that should be helpful but aren't.

After spending time making passive observations, you decide to bring several educators from different schools together in a focus group. 

Now, you'll be able to ask them questions about the equipment they use and its level of helpfulness. You can then study how the focus group participants agree and disagree with each other, gaining a more nuanced perspective.

Risk of ethnographic research

Ethnographic research may be an incredibly helpful way to understand your audience, but it comes with several key risks. 

Ethical concerns

Ethical issues are the biggest risk in ethnographic research. You can't just slide into a different culture or community and start taking notes. Before you begin any type of ethnographic research, make sure you have informed consent from all participants. This includes people you're simply observing.

When you ask for consent, disclose everything you can about the study's purpose and how you'll use the data. The last thing you want to do is violate the privacy of your participants.

Researcher bias

Writing down observations and interpretations of what you see and learn about is important. But take care not to let your perspective veer into the territory of outright bias when you're collecting data and interpreting data. 

If you're unsure about how a specific observation might sound to the people in the group, ask several participants to read your work. This type of sensitivity review can help you avoid potentially harmful biases. 

Influence of the researcher’s presence

When you know someone’s watching you for the purpose of a study, it’s hard not to alter your behavior. Maybe you sit up a little straighter. Work a little harder. Hold back comments you might otherwise say to colleagues or friends. 

This is called the Hawthorne effect, and it can influence the results of your ethnographic study. 

But a lot of things can influence your study, including compensation—which we absolutely recommend—time of day, month of the year, and so on. 

Some researchers believe the Hawthorne effect is overstated. Take this study published in the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) journal, Medical Education, in August 2016. 

The researchers investigated the Hawthorne effect in health professions education (HPE) research. 

After reviewing decades of Hawthorne effect research and studying data collected in two observational studies—one in the operating theater and the other in the intensive care unit—researchers came to a surprising conclusion. 

Here’s what they had to say: “Significant alteration of behaviour is unlikely in many research contexts [and] sustained contact with participants over time improves the quality of data collection.”

In other words, researchers can mitigate any ill effects of behavior alteration by building relationships with the people they’re researching. 

Make building those relationships a key part of your ethnographic studies, and you’re more likely to gain insights that matter. 

When to use this research method 

Ethnographic research can be helpful in several situations. Anytime you need to learn about a group on an immersive level, ethnographic research can help.

Educators can use it to study the dynamics of different classroom environments and teaching methods.

Marketers can use it to study their customers more thoroughly, uncovering motivations, preferences, and pain points from an inside perspective. 

Healthcare professionals can use it to learn about the realities of the patient experience. Nothing reveals the gaps in care like seeing a medical facility through a patient's eyes. 

Just remember to keep ethics at the forefront of your mind by: 

• Obtaining informed consent

• Practicing cultural sensitivity

• Building relationships with the people you’re studying

• Compensating participants for their time

Above all, think less about how ethnographic research can help you succeed. Instead, focus on how it can help you improve the products and services you provide to the people you serve. 

And while we’re on the topic of ethics, Tremendous can help you compensate your study participants. We make it simple to send them everything from cash to gift cards in minutes. Sign up now and send your first reward today, or take a demo with us to see how it works.