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Examining the methods used for a critical ethnographic enquiry
Sonia Allen
School of Nursing & Midwifery, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Churchill VIC
Ysanne Chapman
Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill VIC
Karen Francis
Professor of Rural Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill VIC
Margaret O'Connor
Vivian Bullwinkel Chair in Nursing, Palliative Care, Monash University, Peninsula Campus, Frankston VIC
Abstract
Methodology articulates the broad theoretical and philosophical framework which researchers employ when conducting an inquiry. Methods are the procedural rules by which research inquiry is conducted; giving authority to articulate and communicate information as reliable and accurate in nature.
Critical ethnography delves beneath the surface to examine the power relations and influences affecting phenomena by using field methods to identify not only culture, the ‘consciousness' or the ‘lived experiences' of others, but also exposing the political, social and material disempowerment of individuals and disadvantaged groups in order to elicit change. Fieldwork is central to all ethnographies and in this critical ethnography it forms the platform from which the delivery of palliative care to aged residents in a multi-purpose centre can be scrutinised.
This paper explicates the fieldwork adopted in conducting such a study.
Keywords
ethnography, fieldwork, multipurpose service/centre nursing, resident
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