Rapid Ethnographic Assessments

A Practical Approach and Toolkit For Collaborative Community Research

Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Karen A Kroeger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367252281
• eBook ISBN: 9781000045956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Please see the website of author Thurka Sangaramoorthy for extra resources and material related to this book, at thurkasangaramoorthy.com. Click on the book's cover and be sure to check back for updated content

This book provides provides a practical guide to understanding and conducting rapid ethnographic assessments (REAs) with an emphasis on their use in public health contexts. This team-based, multi-method, relatively low-cost approach results in rich understandings of social, economic, and policy factors that contribute to the root causes of an emerging situation and provides rapid, practical feedback to policy makers and programs.

Using real-world examples and case studies of completed REAs, Sangaramoorthy and Kroeger provide readers with a logical, easy-to-follow introduction into key concepts, principles, and methods of REAs, including interview and observation techniques, triangulation, field notes and debriefing, theoretical saturation, and qualitative analysis. They also provide a practical guide for planning and implementing REAs and suggestions for transforming findings into written reports and actionable recommendations. Materials and detailed tools regarding the conduct of REAs are designed to help readers apply this method to their own research regardless of topic or discipline. REA is an applied approach that can facilitate collaborative work with communities and become a catalyst for action.

Rapid Ethnographic Assessment will appeal to professionals and researchers interested in using REAs for research efficiency and productivity as well as action-oriented and translational research in a variety of fields and contexts.

1Overview of rapid ethnographic assessment

Key learning outcomes

1. 1 Identify key concepts and principles of rapid ethnographic assessment (REA)
2. 2 Understand how REA relates to other qualitative and community-engaged participatory research approaches
3. 3 Know when REA may be useful and when it is not

What influences women in Mexico City to breastfeed their infants? What motivates Native American gay, bisexual, and transgender men to use or not use available HIV prevention services? What factors limit children's access to quality primary education in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya? How is tourism development affecting residents in communities along Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, a historic trail between Mexico and the United States?

Although traditional qualitative and quantitative studies may answer questions like these, such research can often take months or even years to design and implement. They can also consume considerable resources before findings are finalized and shared. Program managers and practitioners in public health, education, and other fields often need to act quickly to make decisions about how well programs are working and what needs to be changed or adjusted to help them to better reach, serve, and respond to the needs of their clients. The need for timely, useable data can be especially critical for programs serving socially marginalized or vulnerable populations because these populations are often hidden, hard to reach, and geographically mobile due to a variety of social, political, and environmental factors. In the current social and political environment, program planners and staff as well as policymakers often find themselves needing practical research and assessment tools and skills that help them obtain timely information on emerging problems, engage local community members in problem solving, foster new collaborations, and inform program and policy adjustments. In this book, we share our experience with REA, a practical, applied method and approach for quickly obtaining community-level data that researchers, program planners and managers, students, and community members can use to understand and alleviate problems.

We broadly define vulnerable populations as social or demographic groups that have relatively limited access to necessary social, political, and economic resources. Vulnerable populations can include persons who lack access to the traditional means of power and experience marginalization due to economic, racial, and gender disparities. Vulnerable populations may also include those who are unstably housed or homeless; uninsured or under-insured; chronically ill or disabled; and the working poor. They can be persons involved in stigmatized or criminalized behaviors such as illicit drug use, sex work, or same-sex relationships. Other populations, such as migrant workers and refugees, may also be vulnerable because they are highly mobile and hard to reach due to seasonal work, war, or environmental disasters. Vulnerable populations often lack access to important social and health services because of social, institutional, policy, and personal barriers. They may not use available services due to stigma, discrimination, and fear of arrest or deportation.

Over the past decade, programs that serve vulnerable populations have had to innovate and adapt quickly to new conditions brought about by severe budget cuts to public health and social services, rapid shifts in social welfare and development priorities, and increasing social, economic, and health disparities. Many programs have had to develop new, more sustainable models of care and engagement for the communities that they serve. This often requires engaging directly with community members to understand their perspectives and involving them in the search for potential solutions.

This community-driven research orientation, which is central to the approach described in this book, places the “insider perspective” at the heart of any research or assessment question. It also presumes that community members have substantial insight into problems and that engaging community members as part of the research process will result in more feasible, practical solutions.

In this book we lay out the theoretical orientation and principles of REA, an applied research method that we have used in our own research, teaching, and community engagement work. We demonstrate how the concepts and practices incorporated in this approach have been used in a variety of domestic and international settings and serve both programmatic and policy needs.

In writing this book, we have made a conscious decision to use the term “REA” to describe the approach we have used in our work. As anthropologists, we are well aware of debates in our discipline regarding whether rapid approaches can be sufficiently “ethnographic.” As researchers, we have conducted more traditional anthropological research in the form of long-term ethnographies, where we spent months and years in the field. We have a keen understanding of what is gained and what is lost in these two very different approaches. We firmly believe that, skillfully applied, it is possible to undertake short-term, rapid research that remains grounded in ethnographic principles. We contend that by using this term, and by emphasizing the centrality of an ethnographic orientation to the work, we are able to engage more effectively with others not trained in anthropology or ethnographic methods about the advantages of using anthropological approaches.

By suggesting that our book would be beneficial to those outside the discipline of anthropology and academic settings, we do not imply that REA and applied research are of lesser importance to those within the discipline or the academy. There is deep anthropological and academic value in applied work, and the lessons learned from REA significantly contribute to the discipline and the training of students in academic programs, the majority of whom are eventually employed outside the academy (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). As we explain below, throughout this book we take seriously the theoretical significance of practice—ideas that clarify and justify the role of practice within and outside the discipline—that focuses on community-driven acquisition of knowledge and its utilization. Thus, we embrace societal or community problem solving as a mainstream disciplinary pursuit, one that contributes to the development and advancement of anthropological theory (Baba 2000). REA is an approach and orientation that illustrates the interdependence of knowledge and action and proves itself capable of producing rigorous problem-oriented scholarship.

What is REA?

REA is primarily a qualitative research method that focuses on the collection and analysis of locally relevant data. It is an approach and orientation to data collection that can be used for a variety of purposes; for example, for exploratory or formative research, for program assessment or needs assessment, as a rapid response tool, or for program evaluation. REA is used to elicit rich description about the context in which things occur, and about processes, systems, motivations, and relationships. REAs often allow research teams to assess a variety of complex social and structural issues to improve programs and policies impacting marginalized and vulnerable populations.

REAs mainly rely on qualitative data collection methods such as interviews and focus groups but also incorporate other methods such as structured observations, mapping, and short surveys. They draw on principles of ethnography, an approach used historically by anthropologists, to learn about the social and cultural conditions of individuals and communities. The primary goal of ethnography is to understand a problem or situation from the perspective of the “insider,” whether the insider is a health provider in a clinical setting, an outreach worker, or a community member who lives in a neighborhood experiencing disease increases. As some anthropologists have described it, the purpose of ethnography is to understand another way of life from the perspective of those who have experienced it, and to “learn from” rather than “study” people (Spradley 1980).

A fundamental aspect of anthropological research is the integration of “emic” or insider perspectives (i.e., perspective of the subject) with “etic” or external perspectives (i.e., perspective of the observer). Incorporating these perspectives in a holistic approach usually results in findings and recommendations that are based on detailed and culturally rich information and grounded in local realities. However, unlike more traditional qualitative research methods, REAs emphasize information for action, which is achieved through a few key principles: (1) the rapid collection and dissemination of information useful for key decision makers; (2) the use of multidisciplinary assessment teams; and (3) triangulation across multiple data collection methods and sources to strengthen the validity of findings, which are aimed at developing practical, achievable recommendations. REA is oriented toward rapid response and carried out over a relatively compressed period of time, with data collection usually taking several days to several weeks, depending upon the scope, and up to several months for analysis of data and report writing. Because of its limited scope, REA is typically less expensive to undertake than other types of studies.

REAs have often been used in health and development sectors where resources and local research capacity are often limited, and where the success of interventions requires direct engagement and collaboration with local communities. In some situations, REA has created a framework for communities to work together to address a need or problem and as a means of transferring research skills to local communities. Today, REAs have broad applicability for anyone interested in research efficiency and productivity as well as action-oriented and translational research.

We intend for this book to be useful to students, researchers, community advocates, public health practitioners, urban planners, and education specialists—many of whom have worked for years to improve programs and policies that impact marginalized and vulnerable populations. In addition, we hope the book appeals to academics in the social sciences, public health, communication, urban development, education, and other fields, who are training future generations of students and researchers interested in doing practical, applied work.

REA in the context of community-engaged research

REA, like other rapid data collection methods, has deep roots in international health and development, arising in the 1970s from a need to respond quickly to problems in communities where few data were available. Reasons for this absence of data varied. Developing countries or communities often lacked disease surveillance or other types of systems infrastructure to collect data, and few had economic or human resources needed to carry out studies to gather information on a large scale. In some cases, a problem was new or emerging, so data were non-existent. Development experts in agriculture, community development, and health, many of whom were trained social scientists, realized there was a need to innovate. They sought a middle ground between “quick and dirty” methods such as cursory observations made by external professionals during site visits and, at the other extreme, traditional social science studies such as long-term ethnography or surveys that could take years to complete and result in few data that could be applied to planning programs and services. Approaches such as Rapid Rural Appraisal (Chambers 1979) developed, in which teams of researchers worked alongside local people and employed a variety of qualitative and observational methods including individual and group interviews, field observations and ethnographic mapping, archival study, and rapid, street-based surveys and censuses to quickly obtain information related to a focused problem or question.

Over the years, numerous models developed that were similar to Rapid Rural Appraisal. These approaches drew on anthropological principles of “treating [insiders] as teachers” (Chambers 1979), and sought to reverse existing social and intellectual hierarchies that positioned the researcher (or outsider) as the expert and community members as subjects of research. Health and development workers recognized that drawing on indigenous knowledge, practices, and experiences in program design could determine their success or failure. This shift toward a more participatory and engaged view of local populations, which placed the researcher in the position of “lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of boxes
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Chapter summaries
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Overview of rapid ethnographic assessment
• 2 Key considerations in planning for a rapid 
ethnographic assessment
• 3 Rapid ethnographic assessment design and methods
• 4 Fieldwork
• 5 Data analysis
• 6 Report writing and follow up
• 7 Case studies
• Appendices
• Appendix 1: Glossary of terms
• Appendix 2: Sample REA concept proposal
• Appendix 3: Sample project planning tool
• Appendix 4: Sample REA budget template
• Appendix 5: Sample REA team position descriptions
• Appendix 6: Sample statement of work
• Appendix 7: Interview guide template
• Appendix 8: Interview note-taking guide
• Appendix 9: Sample REA training agenda
• Appendix 10: Sample training budget
• Appendix 11: Sample REA report template
• Appendix 12: Rapid ethnographic assessment resources
• Index