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246 CHAPTER 9 Ethnography

investigate process documents, e-mail exchanges over the course of one or more
projects, papers, and presentations generated during the course of the work in order
to understand how that group works. These archival data sources have the advantage
of being relatively static and impersonal—you can take your time reading old e-mails
and you don't risk asking an inappropriate question. At the same time, these materials
may be incomplete, biased, or error-prone (Angrosino, 2007).
Having collected data from interviews, observations, and archives, your next
step is to analyze it. Data analysis generally combines qualitative and quantitative
analysis techniques. This chapter focuses on collecting data using ethnographic
methods, but Chapter 11 helps you take your various observations and group them
into categories and frameworks that help you understand and explain the situation.
Quantitative techniques help you ask questions about the frequency or prevalence
of certain behaviors. These analyses are very useful for moving your understanding
from the general (“this happened frequently”) to the specific (“this happened in 79%
of cases”).
Analysis in ethnographic research is often a precursor to further data collection.
As you examine your data points to identify patterns, you may find other questions
arising. In some cases, you may be uncertain about the interpretation of an event or
a comment—you may wish to ask someone for clarification or simply for confirma-
tion that your interpretation is correct. Other data points may open up entirely new
lines of questioning. Observations from a community event, such as a meeting or
public gathering, may lead to multiple questions that you might ask at a subsequent
interview—whether formal or informal—with someone who was present (Agar,
1980). This iterative process can continue for multiple rounds (Figure 9.2), until you
run out of resources (time and money) or have learned all that you're going to learn.

Data collection

Analysis New questions

Revised models Convergence on
and theories validated model
FIGURE 9.2
The iterative process of ethnographic research.

Although many ethnographers strive to develop models and theories that place
their observations in some sort of theoretical model or framework, this approach is
not universally shared. Some researchers reject theories and models, claiming that
ethnographers should simply describe what they see, without building models that
may reflect researcher or procedural biases as much as (if not more than) they reflect