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Why Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods Are Essential for Understanding Family Life

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Book cover Emerging Methods in Family Research

Part of the book series: National Symposium on Family Issues ((NSFI,volume 4))

Abstract

Qualitative and ethnographic methods for measuring and understanding family daily life are essential to family research. These methods offer depth, breadth, veridicality, holism, and understanding of the meanings and experiences of family life. The cultural and social context is bracketed in, not bracketed out by using these methods. Family activities and how they matter are described using the narrative of those involved. The moral directions for life valued by family members are better understood. The value of such methods is even greater when we can combine them with quantitative and other assessment measures to provide an integrated suite of evidence. Qualitative interviews and observations of families, including photos and video, can be reliably coded for quantitative analyses or indexed for thematic and pattern analysis. Interventions also benefit from a richer understanding of what goes on inside the program when qualitative methods are applied. Qualitative methods and analyses are particularly strong for gaining trust and rapport, unpacking conventional analytic categories, understanding family processes over time, describing everyday scripts and narratives that drive family behavior and family routines, and discovering the diverse and pluralistic family forms and beliefs in cultures around the world.

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Acknowledgements

The New Hope Study has been supported by the MacArthur Network on Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood, NICHD grant R01HD36038-01A1 (Robert Granger, Aletha Huston, Greg Duncan, and Thomas Weisner, co-PI’s), the UCLA Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory in the Center for Culture and Health (Thomas Weisner, PI), and the Next Generation Project (funded by the David and Lucile Packard, William T. Grant, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation). The New Hope Ethnographic Study (NHES) is part of the evaluation of New Hope , Inc. conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. The CHILD study was supported by Grants # HD19124 and HD11944 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Ronald Gallimore, Barbara Keogh, Kazuo Nihira and Thomas Weisner, PIs). The La Vida Project was funded with a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Family Obligation and Assistance among Adolescents from Mexican Backgrounds, R01HD057164 (Andrew Fuligni, PI; Thomas Weisner, Nancy Gonzales, Co-PIs). The study also was supported by the Center for Culture & Health, Semel Institute, Department of Psychiatry, UCLA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Thomas S. Weisner PhD

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  1. Thomas S. Weisner PhD
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Correspondence to Thomas S. Weisner PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Human Develop. & Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Susan M. McHale

  2. Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Paul Amato

  3. Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Alan Booth

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Weisner, T. (2014). Why Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods Are Essential for Understanding Family Life. In: McHale, S., Amato, P., Booth, A. (eds) Emerging Methods in Family Research. National Symposium on Family Issues, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01562-0_10

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