Counting as a Qualitative Method: Grappling with the Reliability Issue in Ethnographic Research - Softcover

Fife, Wayne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3030348059 ISBN 13: 9783030348052

Publisher: Palgrave Pivot, 2021

Synopsis

This book aims to explore counting as an often-overlooked research tool for qualitative projects. Building off of a research method invented by the author in 1986 called counting schedules, this volume provides instruction on how to use counting not only to enhance fieldwork results, but also as a form of analysis for extant field notes, interview results, self-reporting diaries or essays, primary archival material, secondary historical texts, government sources, and other documents and narratives, including fictional work. The author buttresses his discussion of counting schedules with extensive examples from previous fieldwork and research experiences, drawing on three decades of anthropological experience in Canada and the Pacific Islands. Counting as a Qualitative Method provides ethnographic researchers with the answer to the number-one question asked by qualitative and non-qualitative researchers alike: How can a qualitative researcher know his or her results are reliable?

About this title

About the Author

Wayne Fife is Professor of Anthropology at Memorial University, Canada. He is the author of Doing Fieldwork (2005) and some two-dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. He has done research and written about aging in Ontario, education in Papua New Guinea, Pacific Island missionaries, ecological and heritage tourism in Newfoundland, imaginary worlds, and research methods and theory.

From the Back Cover

“This book will be very valuable for teaching students how to use counting in the context of research and analysis in sociocultural anthropology. It is full of very vividly described examples from the author’s own research that make the book’s explanation of counting as a research method clear and engaging.”

―Vanessa Fong, Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College, USA

This book aims to explore counting as an often-overlooked research tool for qualitative projects. Building off of a research method invented by the author in 1986 called counting schedules, this volume provides instruction on how to use counting not only to enhance fieldwork results, but also as a form of analysis for extant field notes, interview results, self-reporting diaries or essays, primary archival material, secondary historical texts, government sources, and other documents and narratives, including fictional work. The author buttresses his discussion of counting schedules withextensive examples from previous fieldwork and research experiences, drawing on three decades of anthropological experience in Canada and the Pacific Islands. Counting as a Qualitative Method provides ethnographic researchers with the answer to the number-one question asked by qualitative and non-qualitative researchers alike: How can a qualitative researcher know his or her results are reliable?

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3030348059
• ISBN 13: 9783030348052
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152