Hi all,

I am in the final year of a PhD using ethnographic methods to explore the culture of a support service for sex workers. The key themes from my analysis seem to fit together as a model of how experience is conceptualised/framed within the service.

My question is, does anybody know of other ethnographic studies that have created models from their data? Understandably my supervisors are a bit nervous about me creating a model for a qualitative study, with models being largely fixed and more fitting with quant work.

If anyone knows of any such ethnographic work, or even just qual work with a critical realist underpinning, which has produced a model of some sort, I'd really appreciate you pointing me in its direction.

Many thanks,
Bethan

That's definitely a good place to start, thank you

My PhD is focused on support services for sex workers and I am currently coding my observation data. There appears to be a real theme of service-user sharing, as in service-users sharing stories of violence, tragedy, pride etc.

I'm struggling to find relevant literature that looks at social sharing and the purposes behind this kind of disclosure etc. If anyone could suggest some relevant reading I would greatly appreciate it.

Hi all,

I am using ethnographic methods and have carried out 10 months of participant observation, all written up as field notes and currently being analysed thematically (those who are thinking that is far two simplistic, don't worry, it's totally appropriate and justified) and I'm half way through conducting semi-structured interviews. Once these are done I will also be using thematic analyse on this data set.

My question is about a method of presenting this data which allows me to tell some sort of story, either a month in the field setting, or a story of a particular participant etc. The idea behind this is that I don't want to simply chop the data up and lose it's sense as a whole. A reviewer in my progression meeting suggested vignettes, so I wanted to know what you guys would suggest?

Thank you!
Bethan

Hi folks,

For my PhD I'm using ethnographic methods and am currently trying to write-up something about the role of theory and ethnography. I know that ethnography is classed as method and methodology, and therefore has it's own theoretical underpinnings and ontological and epistemological assumptions; but it's flipping hard to pin down what these actually are!

So far I have come across some writers who say ethnography fits into the interpretivist paradigm, some who say all ethnographers take a relativist stance, and some who say it's phenomenological.

My question is, can all of these be true at the same time? Do they fit together in some kind of theoretical hierarchy (e.g. relativism is a theoretical position within the interpretivist paradigm etc) or is it just a case of whose opinion you resonate with?

I'm also wanting to carry out a critical realist ethnography (of sorts) and wondered if that's at all compatible with the above paradigms/assumptions?

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated, or suggestions of any clear literature on the subject.

Thanks,
Bethan

Thank you both for your help :)

I am currently in the second year of a PhD using ethnographic methods to explore the lived experience of participating in a support service for sex workers.

I am at the stage of wanting to read more around types of analysis and would be really grateful if people could suggest any studies in which people have analysed ethnographic data (observations and interviews would be best) using a narrative approach.

Thank you!
Bethan