Ethnography

Ethnography is a methodology based on direct observation. Of course, when doing ethnography, it is also essential to listen to the conversations of the actors \u2018on stage\u2019, read the documents produced by the organization under study, and ask people questions. Yet what most distinguishes ethnography from other methodologies is a more active role assigned to the cognitive modes of observing, watching, seeing, looking at, gazing at and scrutinizing. Ethnography, like any other methodology, is not simply an instrument of data collection. It is born at particular moment in the history of society and embodies certain of its cultural features. This chapter, embracing a theory of method, focuses upon why (right now, notwithstanding more than one century of history) ethnography has come into fashion

A cumulative book review of:  Conis, E.Vaccine Nation: America's Changing Relationship with Immunization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press2015. 361 pp 18(pbk)18 (pbk) 18 (ebk) ISBN 978‐0‐22637839‐8 Reich, J.A.Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, New York: New York University Press2016. 336 pp 75(cloth)75 (cloth) 20.00 (pbk) ISBN 978‐1‐47981279‐0 Holmberg, C., Blume, S. and Greenough, P.R. (eds) The Politics of Vaccination: A Global History, Manchester: Manchester University Press2017. 360 pp £96 (cloth) £96 (ebk) ISBN 978‐1‐5261‐1088‐6

In recent years, the issue of compulsory and mass vaccinations has acquired increasing relevance in the public health field. Inquiries have been conducted from medical, epidemiological and healthcare perspectives, as well as in social, historical and anthropological sciences; the latter have empirically studied the multifaceted movement rather simplistically referred to as \u2018anti-vax\u2019. Hence, they have brought to light a wide range of different attitudes, motivations and positions with regard to vaccinations. The three volumes discussed in this review are written by scholars in the social sciences and humanities and offer a non-medical view on the phenomenon of immunisation. They are very different yet at the same time complementary books in terms of the disciplines they represent: Elena Conis is a historian of medicine and public health (with a BA in biology); Jennifer Reich is a sociologist; and the third volume is edited by Christine Holmberg (a healthcare anthropologist), Stuart Blume (a science sociologist with a Ph.D. in chemistry) and Paul Greenough (a historian of medicine)

Health Impact of Gas Flares on Igwuruta / Umuechem Communities in Rivers State

This paper examined the relationship between human exposure to toxicological factors in the environment arising from gas flares and the development of various human health related conditions. The impact of environmental factors was investigated at four stations set up concentrically around Agbada II flow station, for a period of nine months (May, 2007 – January, 2008) and sampling was performed manually across the four stations on an hourly basis. The analytical program was done in line with WMO recommendations. Parameters investigated include particulates and gases. Mean particulate concentrations in rainy season across all sites ranged from 0.4 ± 0.4ìg/m3 in June to 25 ± 5.4ìg/m3 in May. Concentration levels of particulates were excessive in the months of December and January, exceeding allowable regulatory limits for TSP, PM10 and PM7 across all stations. Mean concentration levels of gases in both wet and dry seasons were within allowable regulatory limits. Analysis of medical records showed a greaterfrequency of disease types such as Asthma, Cough, breathing difficulty, eye/skin irritation in (Igwuruta/Umuechem), the study area with a long history of gas flaring compared to Ayama with no flaring history. These subset of diseases accounted for 22.4% and 5.9% (a 4 to 1 ratio) of all cases reported at the respective health centers. The high level of particulates in the dry season constitutes a greater short-term exposure risk to residents and workers with the particular risk of respiratory irritation, itching/eye irritation and cough being endemic in the area surrounding the flare

La globalizzazione della survey : storia, limiti e opportunit\ue0

E\u2019 luogo comune pensare che l\u2019intervista standardizzata e la survey siano nate contemporaneamente o almeno che il loro matrimonio sia indissolubile. Ci\uf2 non sembra corrispondere a verit\ue0. L\u2019intervista standardizzata ha incontrato la survey solo negli anni \u201820, quando quest\u2019ultima era gi\ue0 grande, forte di un\u2019esperienza di quasi cent\u2019anni. Di conseguenza l\u2019idea di standardizzare l\u2019intervista con questionario nasce solo molto tardi. Infatti soltanto negli anni \u201830 esse si vincolarono definitivamente, quando la survey trad\uec le sue origini per diventare il metodo che oggi conosciamo. Per cui survey, intervista con questionario (survey interview) e intervista standardizzata non sono sinonimi. La survey \ue8 un metodo e s\u2019identifica con l\u2019intero processo di ricerca (dal disegno della ricerca all\u2019analisi dei dati); l\u2019intervista con questionario \ue8 la tecnica attraverso cui la survey raccoglie i suoi dati. Infine l\u2019intervista standardizzata \ue8 una modalit\ue0 particolare, che \ue8 diventata dominante nell\u2019ultimo secolo, di raccogliere i dati. Sfortunatamente nel corso degli anni la pratica di ricerca e la letteratura hanno imploso questi tre differenti termini (e concetti) facendoli diventare tutt\u2019uno. Lo scopo di questo saggio \ue8 di mantenere questa distinzione e affermare che la survey pu\uf2 vivere benissimo senza l\u2019intervista standardizzata, come le era gi\ue0 accaduto tra il 1820 e 1920. Anzi l\u2019abbandono dell\u2019intervista standardizzata da parte della survey, aprirebbe quest\u2019ultima a una nuova vita, pi\uf9 in sintonia con i tempi correnti. Abstract inglese It is common to consider that the standardized interview and survey were born together, or at the very least that their union is indissoluble. It is not true. Standardized interview met the survey in the 1920s only, when the last was already mature, with almost a hundred years of experience behind it. So the idea of standardizing the survey came along quite late. It was only in the 1930s that the two were definitively linked, when the survey betrayed its roots to become the methodology that we know today. Survey, survey interview and standardized interview are not synonyms. The survey is a methodology and may be identified with the entire process of research (from design to data analysis); the survey interview is the method by which the survey gathers its data. Finally, the standardized interview, which has become dominant in the last century, is a particular instrument for collecting survey data. Unfortunately, most research practice and survey literature has collapsed these three different terms and concepts into one and the same thing. The central aim of this essay is to maintain the distinction and to affirm that the survey can stand quite well on its own without the standardized interview, just as it did between the 1820s and the 1920s. Indeed, abandoning the standardized interview would breathe new life into the survey, putting it more in tune with the present

Wytwarzanie \u15blepoty i jej organizacyjne konstruowanie w szkole podstawowej

Niniejszy artyku\u142 jest oparty na studium przypadku przeprowadzonym we w\u142oskiej szkole podstawowej, w kt\uf3rej obserwowano interakcje pomi\u119dzy niewidom\u105 dziewczynk\u105 (o imieniu Jasmine, w wieku lat 8) a jej kolegami i kole\u17cankami z klasy. Pocz\u105tkowym celem bada\u144 by\u142o zrozumienie i opis problem\uf3w, z kt\uf3rymi spotyka si\u119 niewidoma uczennica, dzia\u142aj\u105ca w spo\u142ecznym, organizacyjnym i fizycznym otoczeniu, kt\uf3re nie by\u142o zaprojektowane dla os\uf3b niepe\u142nosprawnych. Jednak w trakcie bada\u144 wy\u142oni\u142y si\u119 inne kwestie. G\u142\uf3wnym odkryciem by\u142o to, \u17ce bycie niewidomym wydaje si\u119 by\u107 spo\u142ecznie i organizacyjnie skonstruowane zanim stanie si\u119 biologiczn\u105 czy fizyczn\u105 u\u142omno\u15bci\u105. Ten w\u142a\u15bnie organizacyjny proces, poprzez kt\uf3ry \u201ebycie niewidomym\u201d jest powoli i rutynowo konstruowane zosta\u142 dog\u142\u119bnie i szeroko opisany

Crafting blindness : its organizational construction in a first grade school

This article is based on a case study conducted in an Italian primary school where the interactions between a sightless girl (named Jasmine, aged 8) and her classmates were extensively observed. The initial aim was to understand and describe the problems encountered by the sightless pupil, who acted in a social, organizational and physical environment which was not designed for handicapped people. However, other theoretical issues emerged during the research. The main finding was that sightlessness seems socially and organizationally constructed before it becomes a biological/physical handicap. The organizational processes through which the blindness is slowly and routinely constructed were extensively described

Re-conceptualizing generalization : old issues in a new frame

The paper deals with three distinctive and separate issues usually mismatched in methodology: sampling, representativeness and generalisability. 1. Sampling in qualitative research had hard times. On one hand it has been long neglected by many qualitative researchers as a mere positivistic worry; on the other it has been undervalued by quantitative researchers because not probabilistic. The formers forget that sampling is an unavoidable step because it is, first of all, an everyday life activity grounded in thought (e.g. the heuristic of representativeness by Kahneman and Tversky, 1972), in language (e.g. the synecdoche, as pointed out by Becker, 1998, 67) and into practice: the buyer tastes a small helping to choose a wine or a cheese; the teacher asks a student some questions to assess his/her knowledge on the whole syllabus. On the other hand quantitative researchers did not realised yet that in social science probabilistic samples are often a chimera because of (1) the lacking of population list for most of the studies on special groups of people and (2) the phenomenon of nonresponse. Besides experiments (reckoned the best possible example of scientific procedure over the years and also today) are not based on probability samples. 2. Fortunately in contemporary qualitative research the problem of representativeness is a constant and growing concern of many researchers (see Silverman 1997; 2001; Seale 1998). Two main linked questions are usually raised: a. how do we know how representative our cases (sample) are of all members of the population from which the cases was selected? b. can we generalise from case study findings to population without following a purely statistical logic? These questions refer to two analytically separated problems usually mismatched: the representativeness of samples and the generalisability of findings. Offering these issues as two sides of the same coin neglects the existing social space between these two activities. As a matter of fact a researcher can conduct a study on a representative sample but findings cannot be generalised for a number of practical reasons related to different method reliability (interview versus focus group versus ethnography; sloppy data collection; researcher's biases in data analysis; unsuccessful access and relations in the field) and to ecological validity of collected data. 3. This complicate tangle (the non-linear relationship among selecting a sample, its representativeness and generalising findings) has been solved without anxiety by most well-known anthropologists and sociologists, who produced important theories. Good examples are the Lynd’s (1929, 1937), Whyte (1943), Gouldner (1954a and 1954b) observing a small gypsum extraction and refining factory, Dalton’s research (1959) at Milo and Fruhuling, two companies in a highly industrialised area in the US, Geertz (1972) who attended 57 cock fights, De Martino (1961) who observed 21 people suffering from tarantism disease, Becker (1951) who studied many dance musicians, Sudnow (1967) who observed two hospitals, Goffman (1963) who analysed various side involvement and so on. This may lead to the idea that thinking about these complicate matters is wasting time. However defining the sampling unit clearly (which comes before choosing the cases thus picking the sample) is basic to avoid messy and empirically shallow researches. During their analysis of some Finnish researches on “artists”, Mitchell and Karttunen (1991) noticed different findings according to the definition of artist employed by the researchers. The latter included in the category “artist” in some cases (i) those who describe themselves so, in other cases (ii) someone who constantly creates durable works of art, in other cases (iii) someone who is considered an artist by the whole society or (iv) someone who is taken into consideration by artists’ associations. A comparison is therefore impossible. Beginning from the useful but still vague concept of “theoretical sampling” (Glaser and Strauss 1967) the author discusses: • how to practically select a sample according to the conceptualisation of the research topic and questions • some strategies of qualitative sampling (purposive, quota, emblematic case, snowball and so on) and its pitfalls, obstacles, constraints and deviant cases • the concept of representativeness linked with the concept of pervasiveness of the social phenomena. In other words if ethologists, zoologists, astrophysicists, archaeologists, biologists, historians, cognitive scientists and so on do science observing small samples, why not the qualitative researcher? • how generalise from small samples. In other words how to manage the irremediable gap between situation and theory, indexical observations and general statements (see Gubrium and Holstein, 1997)

Best practices : rituals and rhetorical strategies in the initial telephone contact

In the social sciences the need to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches has long been recognized, but research practice rarely meets this need. The best way to achieve such an objective may be to select specific aspects of empirical research where the two approaches can achieve a mutual collaboration. One of these aspects is in dealing with the problem of refusals in survey research. In particular this paper will deal with the "initial telephone contact", a clearly-defined step in the survey research process. This step is crucial because, during the contact, refusals to participate may arise. Refusals are an increasing phenomenon which are particularly threatening to survey research, in that attempts to counter-act their effects can produce serious bias in the statistical inferences that are made and distort the data analysis. The advice reported in survey handbooks in order to manage the initial contact is often unrealistic and contradictory. Further, to reduce the refusal effect, standard texts propose that statistical weights are used. It is argued, however, that these are artificial and often completely arbitrary. For this reason it is important to adhere as much as possible to the random sample design by trying to persuade as many selected respondents to participate as possible. To bring this about, it is important that researchers address attention to the telephone communicative processes between interviewer and respondent, with a view to improving and identifying suitable rhetorical strategies. Based upon the results of his own research the author offers suggestions about how to manage the initial contact and which rhetorical tools to use. Further, he shows how discourse analysis and conversation analysis can improve techniques by accurately identifying strategies the interviewer uses for handling the contact, an important step towards identifying best practice for communicating with respondents