A Companion to Medical Anthropology. Группа авторов
in the domain
DATA COLLECTION
Methods of data collection in medical anthropology fall into three broad categories: participant observation, systematic observation, and interview methods. Participant observation is the bedrock of data collection in medical anthropology, as it is in the parent discipline. DeWalt and DeWalt (2011, p. 2) define participant observation as “a way to collect data in naturalistic settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the common and uncommon activities of the people being studied.” The key task of participant observation is to create a systematic record of everyday life by writing field notes about informal observations, interactions, and conversations.
There is variation in how researchers balance the roles of participant and observer in ethnographic research (Spradley 1980). For his work on immigration, social hierarchy, and health, Holmes (2013) immersed himself in the lives of migrant farmworkers. Over 18 months of participant observation, he lived in the village of San Miguel in Oaxaca State, earned the trust of Triqui people planning to cross the U.S.–Mexico border, was apprehended with but separated from his Triqui companions by U.S. border patrols, and eventually lived and worked in a labor camp, picking strawberries in Central California. Holmes placed high value on participation, drawing attention to his own bodily experiences as a field worker (in both senses) as a source of insight into social suffering (p. 34).
In health services research, Sobo (2009, p. 211) is more often a participating observer than an observing participant, but she emphasizes a sentiment all participant observers would embrace: “There is no substitute for being there.” Barrett (2008) distinguishes between two major kinds of participant observation in his ethnography of Aghor medicine. The first is “the classic form of ‘active participation’ in which the ethnographer increasingly engages in the distinctive behaviors of his or her informants in order to better understand those behaviors in their appropriate cultural context” (p. 14). The second drew on Barrett’s previous clinical experience as a registered nurse and volunteer at clinics in his field site. Barrett wasn’t engaged in these roles during his research, as is typical in active participant observation; rather he used participation in relevant contexts as a framework for making sense of ethnographic observations. Strong (2020), by contrast, “participated in nearly all aspects of the life of the hospital” in the Rukwa region of Tanzania where she studied maternal mortality and the ethics of care (p. 17).
Systematic observation differs from participant observation because it imposes more structure on sampling and measurement (Johnson and Sackett 1998). For that reason, methods of systematic observation – including continuous monitoring, spot sampling, and time allocation – are best suited to confirmatory research questions. Systematic observation deserves wider use in medical anthropology, because many research questions concern what people do, not just what they say. And there is ample evidence that what people say is seldom a good proxy for what they do (Bernard et al. 1984).
Vitzthum (1994) studied concordance between maternal recall and systematic observation of breastfeeding in the Peruvian Andes. She interviewed 30 Nuñoa women with children under three years of age and asked each woman to estimate how often and how long her child breastfed each