Ron Chenail, Sally St. George, Maureen Duffy, Robin Cooper, marcela polanco, Kenneth Carano, and TBD
The Qualitative Report
Fifth Annual Conference
Qualitative Research Artistry and Craft
Nova Southeastern University
Fort Lauderdale, Florida USA
January 18, 2014

 Auto – personal experience
 Ethno – cultural experience
 Graphy – analyzing and writing experience
(Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, ¶ 1)

 “…a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context”
(Reed-Danahay, 1997, p.
9)
 “…retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture and/or possessing a particular cultural identity”
(Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, ¶ 8)

 “…a research method that utilizes the researchers’ autobiographical data to analyze and interpret their cultural assumptions”
(Chang,
2008, p. 9)
 “…seeks to address that muddled idiosyncratic, florid eccentricities that make us unique as opposed to part of a population”
(Muncey, 2010, p. xi)

 Methodology
 Product / Performance
 Intervention

 Ethnography
 Culture


Other
Objectivity
 Autobiography



Narrative
Self
Subjective

 Native ethnography: Studying one’s own group
 Ethnographic autobiography or Native autobiography:
One’s life story has ethnographic interest
 Ethnography becoming more biographical
 Autobiography becoming more reflective of societal and cultural frames of reference
(Reed-Danahay, 1997, pp. 8-9)

 Biographical –
Ethnographic
 Self-Narrative – Culture
 Insider – Outsider
 Objective – Subjective
 Personal memory data –
Field data (observations, interviews, and artifacts)
 Artistic – Scientific

 Individual /
Collaborative
 Evocative / Interpretive /
Performance / Critical
 Analytic

“Back and forth autoethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations.”
(Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.
739)

“As they zoom backward and forward, inward and outward, distinctions between the personal and cultural become blurred, sometimes beyond recognition.”
(Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 739)
“The goal is to enter and document the moment-tomoment, concrete details of a life. That’s an important way of knowing as well.”
(Ellis & Bochner,
2000, p. 737)





Start with your personal life
Pay attention to your physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions
Employ systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to understand your experience
Explore your particular life to understand a way of life
(Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 737)

 Alternative to Evocative or Emotional
Autoethnography
 Realist and Analytic
Ethnographic Paradigm
 Traditional Symbolic
Interactionism
 Self-related
Ethnographic Study
(Anderson, 2005, p. 375)






Complete Member
Researcher (CMR) Status in the Research Group or Setting
Analytic Reflexivity
Narrative Visibility of the
Researcher’s Self
Dialogue with Informants
Beyond the Self
Commitment to Theoretical
Analysis Focused on
Improving Theoretical
Understandings of Broader
Social Phenomenon
(Anderson, 2005, pp. 375, 378)

 Personal memory data
 Epiphanies
 Self-observations
 Self-reflections
 External data



Interviews
Artifacts
Literature

 Prose
 Poetry
 Visual
 Music
 Plays
 Dance
 Stand-up

 Reliability – Credibility
 Validity – Verisimilitude
 Generalizability – Reader
Response
(Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, ¶
32-35)

 Memory
 Privacy, Confidentiality, and IRB’s
(Chang, 2008, pp. 68-69)
 Relational ethics
(Ellis, Adams, &
Bochner, 2011, ¶ 28-31)
 Narrative responsibilities
 Privilege


Media
Violence
(Muncey, 2010, p. 105)

 Authors
 Reviewers
 Editors
 Students
 Faculty

 Person: Who is writing the autoethnography?
 Populace: What is the social group to which the person is identifying?
 Position: What is the person’s relationship to the populace?

 Problem: What is the challenge experienced by the person/populace?
 Purpose: Why is the person writing the autoethnography?
 Perspective: What is the person’s lens?

 Plan: How was the autoethnography created?
 Product: What is the autoethnography?
 Praxis: What are the implications of the inquiry?

I've never seen a diamond in the flesh
I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies
And I'm not proud of my address
In the torn up town, no post code envy
But every song's like:
Gold teeth
Grey Goose
Tripping in the bathroom
Bloodstains
Ball gowns
Trashing the hotel room
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody's like:
Crystal
Maybach
Diamonds on your timepiece
Jet planes
Islands
Tigers on a gold leash
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair
And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy

My friends and I we've cracked the code
We count our dollars on the train to the party
And everyone who knows us knows
That we're fine with this, we didn't come from money
But every song's like:
Gold teeth
Grey Goose
Tripping in the bathroom
Bloodstains
Ball gowns
Trashing the hotel room
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody's like:
Crystal
Maybach
Diamonds on your timepiece
Jet planes
Islands
Tigers on a gold leash
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair
And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy

ooh ooh oh ooh
We're better than we've every dreamed
And I'm in love with being queen ooh ooh oh ooh
Life is great without a care
We aren't caught up in your love affair
And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy
Songwriters: Little, Joel / Yelich-O'Connor, Ella Published by © EMI Music Publishing

 Person
 Populace
 Position
 Problem
 Purpose
 Perspective
 Plan
 Product
 Praxis

 Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373-
395.
 Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method.
Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast.
 Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2010).
Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Qualitative
Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social
Research, 12(1), Art. 10, http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108

 Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject.
In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of
qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733-768). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
 Muncey, T. (2012). Creating autoethnographies. Los
Angeles, CA: Sage.
 Reed-Danahay, D. (1997). Introduction. In D. Reed-
Danahay (Ed.), Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the self
and the social (pp. 1-17). Oxford, UK: Berg.

Ron Chenail, PhD
The Qualitative Report
Nova Southeastern University
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences
3301 College Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, Florida USA 33314
Phone: 954.262.3019
Email: ron@nova.edu