The Ethnographic Method in Sociology

This article calls attention to the basics m ethnographic fieldwork and points out how they fit together to form the ethnographic method in sociology. The various requirements that must be met to achieve reliability and validity of fieldwork data are discussed. They include adequate and appropriate sampling procedures, systematic techniques for gath-ering and analyzing data, validation of data, avoidance of observer bias, and documen-tation of findings. The article shows the novice and reminds the experienced field-worker that the ethnographic method is a singularly dynamic and fruitful way of studying the human scene, offering, as it does, unique investigative, substantive, and theoretical contributions to social research. Several versions of this article have been written since the early 1970s to try to explain ethnographic reports to sponsors of environmental impact assessment projects and to social and other scientists involved in these projects who found it difficult to understand qualitative social research and even more difficult to accept it as scientific. In recent years, as more and more sociologists and their students have become comfortable with the idea of ethnography and with its procedures and findings, the original purpose of this article to serve as a largely project-specific, defensive primer on ethnog-raphy has changed. Now that ethnography has found a place in the disci-pline’s methodological comfort zone, it is time for this article to take this change into account.1 Accordingly, the present version continues to be a primer, but it is now addressed to all who have occasion to read about and/or use ethnography’s tools. Its purpose is to call attention to the basics of this kind of fieldwork and to point out how the basics fit together, both logically and practically, to form the ethnographic method in sociology.2 BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE Ethnography is a fieldwork method that has been used by sociologists since at least the early 19th century.3 It enables investigators to gather valid and reliable qualitative data through the development of close and continuin