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Nursing Theory Development
Ethnography is an empirical descriptive or inductive exploratory research method. During the past 20 years, a new awareness and appreciation for this method has arisen in nursing. Nurse anthropologists with backgrounds in anthropology and transcultural nursing have provided leadership in the use of this qualitative approach to research. The work of Aamodt, Glittenberg, Leininger, Ragucci, and Tripp-Reimer serves as models for ethnographic field studies.
The roots of ethnography are found in anthropology, where the fundamental task of all field work is doing ethnography. According to Spradley, an anthropologist, "ethnography is the work of describing a culture I which]. . .aims to understand another way of life from the native point of view."1 As early as 1922, Malinowski, another anthropologist, described the goal of ethnography: ' 'to grasp the native point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world."2 Similarly, the importance of gathering verbatim perspectives from informants or participants in ethnographic research was emphasized as the ernie approach by Boas in 1943.3 Ernie knowledge refers to "the local or native view derived directly from the people's language, beliefs, and experiences."4
Ethnography means learning from people. In so doing, ethnographers are concerned "with the meaning of acations and events to the people [they] seek to understand. Some of these meanings are directly expressed in language; many are taken for granted and communicated only indirectly through word and action."1 Ethnography presents the researcher with a methodology for studying meaning carefully; a process for going beyond what is seen and heard to infer what people know, by careful listening and observation of behavior, environment, and context.
In short, ethnography can be defined as "the systematic process of observing, detailing, describing, documenting, and analyzing the lifeways or particular patterns of a culture (or subculture) to grasp the lifeways or patterns of the people in their familiar environment."5
ADVANTAGES FOR RESEARCH IN ELDERLY HEALTH-CARE NEEDS
Use of the ethnographic method in nursing research began in the. mid 1960s. Leininger developed ethnonursing and the mini-ethnographic methods that differ slightly from ethnography. The ethnonursing method focuses on documenting, describing, and explaining nursing phenomena particularly related to care, health, prevention of illness, and recovery from illness or injury.5 A miniethnography has "limited scope and...