Quantitative Ethnography

How can we make sense of make sense of the deluge of information in the digital age? The new science of Quantitative Ethnography dissolves the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research to give researchers tools for studying the human side of big data: to understand not just what data says, but what it tells us about the people who created it. Thoughtful, literate, and humane, Quantitative Ethnography integrates data-mining, discourse analysis, psychology, statistics, and ethnography into a brand-new science for understanding what people do and why they do it. Packed with anecdotes, stories, and clear explanations of complex ideas, Quantitative Ethnography is an engaging introduction to research methods for students, an introduction to data science for qualitative researchers, and an introduction to the humanities for statisticians--but also a compelling philosophical and intellectual journey for anyone who wants to understand learning, culture and behavior in the age of big data.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Advances in Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2022, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, during October 15–19, 2022.The 29 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 71 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: QE Theory and Methodology Research; Applications in Education Contexts; and Applications in Interdisciplinary Contexts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2019, held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, in October 2019. It consists of 23 full and 9 short carefully reviewed papers selected from 52 submissions. The contributions come from a diverse range of fields and perspectives, including learning analytics, history, and systems engineering, all attempting to understand the breadth of human behavior using quantitative ethnographic approaches.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2020, held in February 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference has been postponed to 2021 and was held in online format. The 28 full papers were selected from 56 submissions. The contributions in this volume come from diverse fields and perspectives, and present the studies on advantages of using quantitative ethnography methods and techniques in a number of different domains and contexts, including ethnography and statistics, human interpretation and machine processing, etc.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2021, held in November 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 26 full papers were selected from the 60 submissions. The contributions in this volume come from diverse fields and perspectives, and present the studies on advantages of using quantitative ethnography methods and techniques in a number of different domains and contexts, including ethnography and statistics, human interpretation and machine processing, etc.

This comprehensive, engaging guide to applied research distills the expertise of the distinguished ethnographer and methodologist Pertti Pelto over his acclaimed 50-year career. Having written the first major text promoting mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in applied ethnography in the 1970s, Pelto now synthesizes decades of innovation, including examples from around the world that illustrate how specific methods yield immediate results for addressing social problems. Ideal for researchers, students, training programs, and technical assistance projects, this thorough text covers the key topics and skills required: gaining entry, recording and organizing field data, a host of specialized techniques, integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, building and training research teams, rapid assessment and focused ethnographic studies, short- and long-term ethnography, writing up results, non-Western perspectives on research, and more.

How can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology. "After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis." --Contemporary Sociology "The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume." -Educational Studies