Difference
Keywords:
Focus group, habitat, setting, survey, questionnaire
Question:
How does ethnography differ from focus groups or surveys?
Answer:
One of the most important differences between ethnography and focus groups is the context in which each happens. Focus groups and surveys are usefool tools for getting at a certain set of things. Focus groups are increadible good at soliciting between product A and B, which product do you like better? But often people in a focus group assembled in an ‘artifical’ setting like a meeting room or laboratory will tell you what they think you want to hear.
Surveys are incredibly good for giving you a sense of the volume of something. They’ll tell what people are doing. They won’t tell you why, and they won’t tell you how. They won’t tell you all the ways in which people are subverting what they just told you they’re doing.
Also, you give people a questionnaire or a survey, and they’re responding to the questions you’ve already framed. They’re responding to questions that suggest you already have a set of assumptions about what it is they should and shouldn’t be doing, or what they might or might not be doing. When you spend time with people in their homes or wherever else they’re having their lives, you get at what they’re really doing.
Ethnography on the other hand almost always happens in the participant’s natural habitat. This is important because one of the most important goals of ethnography is to understand the environment and context in which consumer do what they do.
