Criteria for a Good Ethnography
Criterion I -- Observations are contextualized as relevant (in the immediate setting and in future contexts beyond that setting).
Criterion II -- Hypotheses emerge as the study continues in the setting selected for observation. Judgment of what may be significant is deferred until latter.
Criterion III -- Observation is prolonged and repetitive.
Criterion IV -- The native view of reality is attained through inferences from observation and through the various forms of ethnographic inquiry.
Criterion V -- Sociocultural knowledge held by social participants makes social behavior and communication sensible.
Criterion VI -- Instruments, codes, schedules, questionnaires, agenda for interviews and so forth should be generated as a result of observation and ethnographic inquiry.
Criterion VII -- A Transcultural, comparative is present.
Criterion VIII -- Some of the sociocultural knowledge affection behavior and communication in any particular setting being studied is implicit or tacit, not know to some participants and know only ambiguously to others.
Criterion IX -- Because the informant (any person being interviewed) is one who has the emic, native cultural knowledge, the ethnographic interviewer must not predetermine responses by the kinds of questions asked.
Criterion X -- Any form of technical device that will enable the ethnographer to collect more live data -- immediate, natural, detailed behavior -- will be used.
Criterion XI -- The presence of the ethnographer should be acknowledged and his or her social, personal, interaction position in the situation described.
Notes from:
Culture Process and Ethnography by George and Louise Spindler (Handout Packer)