Ethnographic interview

The ethnographic interview (from ancient Greek Ethnos , foreign people ' and manuscripts , correspondence' "ethnography") is intended as part of qualitative interviews help insights into the living world and the everyday life of people and their culture-specific values to enter. For example, consumers are observed in their natural environment or in their everyday setting (at home, in the vehicle, on the street) and asked about their habits and needs.

A special feature of the ethnographic interview is that it allows the interviewer to be surprised by the answers. So it is not fundamental that there are already presumptions and assumptions about the findings from the ethnographic interview, because the interview also lives from a certain lack of knowledge. Nevertheless, the interview has a certain structure and thus belongs to the category of guideline interviews .

Ethnographic interviews make it possible to capture the respondent's attitudes and everyday routines . These are often not aware of and are therefore not verbalized in a pure conversation. This method of market research opens up many possibilities because the uncovering of habits and attitudes provides important insights into consumer behavior, for example the usage habits of products or the contextual significance of different brands in everyday life. In addition, one can compare the cultural differences between the consumers. All of these findings give the opportunity to align product concepts or brand communications in different markets based on the needs of the target group.

Theoretical foundations

The Ethnographie is a portion of the anthropology or ethnology, their roots are in the Sozialanthropologie . Ethnography is a special form of ethnographic research whose central concern is to understand the life of foreign groups from their point of view. It is not necessarily about looking at peoples or cultures, but also about smaller, often multicultural groups such as the population of a district or the staff in an office. In the Anglo-Saxon language area, ethnography is sometimes used synonymously with “qualitative research”.

Research methodology

The content of an ethnographic interview is the exploration of motives and attitudes to different topics of everyday life or the environment of the respondent. The basic goal is to get to know the examined subgroup from the point of view of the informant, i.e. the interviewee. It's about understanding what facts and knowledge are important to the interviewee and how their knowledge relates to the context of the community or culture. For this reason, one always has to see all findings from ethnographic interviews in their wider cultural context.

Most insights are obtained by combining participatory observation and an exploratory conversation, the interview itself. The observation can reveal discrepancies between a statement in the interview and the actual action. However, it is important that the focus is always on the interviewee in their natural, everyday environment, for example how does the person handle certain appliances in the household? What does the person do in the vehicle while driving?

Video recordings are one of the common recording methods in ethnography and have proven their worth in field research , especially because of the possibility of documenting emotions, actions, images, etc. Other recording methods are "notetaking" and recordings using a dictation machine.

Mark

the interview is mostly semi-structured with a few pre-determined key questions
the interviewee conducts the conversation with his or her answers (similar to the narrative interview, see narrative interview )
the interview aims to reveal facts, but is not interested in their statistical validity or frequency
it is much more about understanding what exactly is important for the interviewee and how his knowledge is to be viewed and evaluated in the context of the community or culture
the interview is based on the active listening method. In doing so, the interviewer encourages the informant to report his or her experiences, etc.

With the assumption that the members of a certain study group are part of their own social subculture, which differs from other subcultures, for example in terms of language or values, it is necessary to find new methods for the specific needs and requirements.

Areas of application

Software development: software ergonomists use ethnographic methods with the aim of changing and improving computer support (cf. Simonsen, Kensing, 1997); this is used to determine user needs
Market research: is suitable for the development of detailed consumer behavior (influence of personal values on brand loyalty, influence of lifestyle on consumer needs) and is mainly used by institutes oriented towards market psychology (e.g. Sinus Sociovision [1] , Spiegel Institute [2] )
Social pedagogy and milieu studies: this serves to investigate social groups and their behavioral patterns

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

better understanding of the needs, workflows and preferences of consumers
Through the open interview, only what is really important to the consumer is talked about
By conducting the interview under real conditions, many factors that would otherwise not be recorded are included
the context of behavior as well as ideas, thoughts and beliefs are also considered

Disadvantages: time consuming and laborious

literature

JG Bloomberg, A. Mosher, P. Swenton-Hall: Ethnographic Field Methods and their Relation to Design. Participatory Design Principles and Practice. 1993.
A. Rose, B. Shneiderman, C. Plaisant: An applied Ethnographic Method for redesigning User Interfaces. University of Maryland, 1995.
JP Spradley: The Ethnographic Interview. New York 1997.