Qualitative research as a separate scholarly trend encompasses the paradigm of human experiences in order to create and apply efficient clinical practice frameworks. According to the researchers, qualitative data analysis catalyzes an in-depth understanding of human needs in the context of health care and interaction with professionals (Lützén, 2017). The three major branches of qualitative research comprise grounded theory, phenomenological, and ethnographic approaches. In terms of the present paper, phenomenological and ethnographic qualitative studies will be reviewed and compared.
Ethnographic research is an approach to data collection and analysis that aims at evaluating and categorizing human experiences through the lens of the participants’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Phenomenological studies, for their part, place major emphasis on the unique experiences of individuals. The similarity between the concepts concerns the fact that both approaches tend not to perceive physical and medical phenomena in isolation from human’s social context. However, ethnographic research may be both synchronic and diachronic by its nature due to the researchers’ ability to investigate historical patterns of cultural pathologies and average health indicators. Phenomenological research focuses primarily on discovering ones of epidemiological data (Jamali, 2018). Moreover, while ethnographic research aims at defining the collective experiences of the community, phenomenology sheds light on diverse experiences within a community united by culture or ethnic origin.
An example of an ethnographic study would be the research that aims at investigating the attitudes to vaccination among Alaska Natives and American Indians. In order to obtain tangible study outcomes, it would be imperative to collect background socio-cultural data that may be crucial in terms of the community’s decision-making patterns. On the other hand, when investigating people’s personal experiences with COVID-19 vaccination, researchers do not have to tie the data to a specific background, focusing on the unique narratives of the respondents instead. Considering the approaches, it should be concluded that despite the existing differences, both phenomenological and ethnographic studies present an exceptional value for the development of evidence-based clinical practice.
References
Jamali, H. R. (2018). Does research using qualitative methods (grounded theory, ethnography, and phenomenology) have more impact?Library & Information Science Research, 40(3-4), 201-207.
Lützén, K. (2017). The value of qualitative methods in prioritized healthcare research. Nordic Journal of Nursing Research, 37(4), 175-176.