This article highlights the contribution of ethnography and qualitative sociology to the ethical challenges that frame the diagnosis of dementia. To illustrate this contribution, the paper draws on an ethnographic study of UK memory clinics carried out between 2012 and 2014. The ethnographic data, set alongside other studies and sociological theory, contest the promotion of a traditional view o...

Organisational problems in industry have evoked increased interest in empirical methodologies in the broader software engineering community. In particular, the human role in software development has been addressed. Qualitative research approaches are identified as necessary for understanding human nature. The qualitative approach addressed in this article is that of ethnography in relation to s...

As digital technologies have matured, they have moved beyond the workplace to our everyday lives, presenting interesting methodological and research challenges. Attempting a useful input into dependability processes requires an understanding of how technologies are integrated into a range of social contexts. However, to usefully consider issues of dependability we may require significant shifts...

Ethnographic revisits have become an increasing practice in the social sciences, designed to advance the understanding of history through the linking of micro processes and societal structures. In this article I revisit my study of Zambianisation on the Copperbelt, conducted between 1968 and 1972. The methodology of the extended case method is used first to re-present the original study and the...

A qualitative research design using the interviews of five homeless street females was undertaken to understand the meaning of the lived experiences of the homeless street females and their identified need for community based programs. This research design provided the researchers with the opportunity to understand the complexities of homelessness from the homeless street females in Ethiopia us...

This study deals with adherence to tuberculosis treatment among men and women as well as the disease's links and consequences vis-à-vis life styles and treatment outcomes. The ethnographic study was a component of the Tuberculosis Epidemiological Control Project in the city of Pelotas and aimed to identify the reasons patients failed to complete treatment. Direct ethnographic observations and s...

Although ethnographic methods are still regarded, to an extent, as new aspects of HCI research practice, they have been part of HCI research almost since its inception, and certainly since the early 1980s, about the same time as the CHI conference was founded. What, then, accounts for this sense of novelty and the mystery that goes along with it? One reason is that ethnographic methods have gen...

The authors show how ethnography can provide multiple strategically important perspectives on behaviors of interest to marketing researchers. They first discuss the goals and four essential characteristics of ethnographic interpretation. Then they review the particular contributions to interpretation of several kinds of ethnographic observation and interview data. Next they discuss how interpre...