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9.4 Conducting ethnographic research 237

situations, you may need to go through multiple stages of approval, including not
only traditional institutional review board approval for research (see Chapter 15), but
also certification, security and background checks, fingerprinting, sexual harassment
training, and similar hurdles. You may be required to sign confidentiality agreements
or other legal agreements. None of these should stop you from selecting a potential
research site, but they are important considerations to be aware of.
In some cases, the selection of sites may be based on convenience—
organizations, places, and people that you know well increase familiarity and com-
fort, which may make the research less daunting. Familiarity is not without its own
hazards, however, as you might find that foreknowledge limits your objectivity.
If you are faced with the good fortune of having several potentially viable candi-
date groups to choose from, you might want to do a bit of preliminary work to inform
your choice. Your interactions with the individuals in a group may provide some in-
dication as to whether that group is a good candidate for your research. You'll always
need to work to build a relationship with the members of groups that you study, but
you might be more inclined to work with a group that seems welcoming and encour-
aging, rather than a group that seems hostile or uninterested.
Some groups, or group members, may have very good reasons for being wary
about participating in an ethnographic study. They may be legitimately concerned
about your research agenda, as the questions you ask, the conclusions you draw, and
the reports that you write might have a very real impact on them. Consider a study
of the work habits of repair technicians. You might be interested in building an un-
derstanding of technicians' work habits, in the hopes of designing tools that will help
them more effectively share information. If, however, a candidate group perceives
this system as an attempt to “de-skill” their work, threatening their employment sta-
bility or autonomy, they may be reluctant to participate. You may have to work to
build trust to convince group members that participation in your project will not be
something that they will regret.
You should also consider the practical impact of your research on the group that
you are studying. If you are going to be spending a great deal of time in someone's
home, school, or workplace, you might be in the way. Questions that you might ask
in order to help your understanding might distract from the goals of the people that
you're working with. One rule of thumb might be to try to make sure that the benefits
outweigh the costs for your participants: they should get something worthwhile out
of the time that they commit to helping your research (Angrosino, 2007). If you're
studying work practices in order to understand the requirements for a new system—
as in our hospital example—the benefits to the participants might be clear: you'll be
able to build a system that will support their work. If the benefits are less immediate,
you might consider trying to find some way to compensate participants.

9.4.2 PARTICIPATING: CHOOSING A ROLE
Participation is a critical part of ethnography. Realizing that there are limits in
what can be learned by observing from the outside, ethnographers strive to be in-
volved in the situations that they are studying. Participation removes the need for