Methods
Site Documents

In addition to participant observation and interviews, ethnographers may also make use of various documents in answering guiding questions.  When available, these documents can add additional insight or information to our projects.  Because ethnographic attention has been and continues to be focused on both literate and non-literate peoples, not all research projects will have site documents available.  It is also possible that even research among a literate group will not have relevant site documents to consider; this could vary depending on the focus of your research.  Thinking carefully about our sites and how they function and asking questions of our informants helps us to decide what kinds of documents might be available.

There are a variety of kinds of documents which might be relevant for our projects. These documents are not produced for research purposes.  Generally, these documents can be divided into three categories.  Be absolutely clear in the final paper how the documents used fit into these categories!

• Documents produced by the people in your fieldsite.  These kinds of documents can help us learn how the group in question expresses itself to either insiders or outsiders.  What is written about and how?  Why would this document be produced?  Who will read or use it, and how?  What isn't included that could be?  What does it tell you, either directly or indirectly, about your guiding question?  Specific reflection on the topic of our research need not be present for us to find documents produced by our informants useful.

• Documents produced by people somehow like the people in your fieldsite. These kinds of documents can help us learn about general issues which might affect our specific fieldsite. We might learn specific vocabulary for trial use in our site through reading these kinds of documents.  It is also possible to become sensitized to certain issues which may be present in our sites before approaching the group directly.  Always remember that considerable variation among sites exists and that not everything you learn will be relevant to your specific site.

• Documents produced about the people in your fieldsite.  These kinds of documents can help you to place your group in a wider institutional, interactional, or global context.  We can learn more about what kinds of constrictions are placed upon the people in our site, prejudices against them, privileges they are accorded, or their reputations among certain other groups of people.  Useful sources of demographic information or documentation of historical events might also be available.

Possible documents include: budgets, advertisements, work descriptions, annual reports, memos, correspondence, informational brochures, teaching materials, newsletters, websites, recruitment or orientation packets, contracts, records of court proceedings, posters, minutes of meetings, menus, and many other kinds of written items.

For example, an ethnographer studying how third graders learn science in a classroom setting might want to collect such things as the state- or school-mandated science curriculum for third graders in the school(s) where he or she does research, and examples of written student work.  Local school budget allocations to science education, specific teachers' lesson plans, and copies of age-appropriate science textbooks could also be relevant.  It might also be useful to try finding subgroups of professional educators organizations which focus on teaching elementary school science and join their listservs, attend their meetings, or get copies of their newsletters.  All of these things could greatly enrich the participant observation and the interviews that we do!

Another example: In her ethnography of an AIDS funding organization, anthropology major Jhuma Chaudhuri took note of the various posters in the office which portrayed messages about the HIV virus and people with AIDS.  She also gathered informational brochures distributed but not produced by the organization, as well as an agency staff-produced questionnaire regarding quality of life issues for local HIV + individuals.  These documents helped her to add to what she learned through participant observation and interviews with regards to her main interest: how the organization socially constructs HIV and AIDS.

Privacy or copyright issues may apply to the documents you gather, so it is important to inquire about this when you find or are given documents.  If you are given permission to include what you learn from these documents in your final paper, the documents should be cited appropriately and included in the bibliography of your final paper.  (See drafting the paper for citation guidelines.)  If you are not given permission, do not use them in any way!

References

Hammersley, Martyn and Paul Atkinson
1995  "Documents" In Ethnography: Principles in Practice.  Pp. 157-174.  Second edition.  New York: Routledge.