Research questions for ethnographic data

How does understanding how the notes will be used (having a focus) affect the way researchers take notes?

What do these notes suggest about how beginning ethnographers take notes?

What do these notes show about what happened in our classroom event?  What do they emphasize?  What do they leave out?

How does the fact that everyone is taking notes ruin this data as a representation of “real” ethnographic experience?

What kind of experience do these notes present?

How do the observations progress (or do they) in terms of moving toward “theories” about what happened?  Where do the first “patterns” appear?  How/where/are they developed as we move through individual note takers’ notes?  Do note takers ever undo theories?

What do these data reveal about social dynamics in this class?

What do these notes suggest about what students learned about taking ethnographic fieldnotes through this exercise (how do these notes compare to notes we read in class)?  How or did this exercise “teach” broadening the focus of attention?

What is reliable?  How can we tell what is reliable?  What do these notes teach us about reliability?

What are the different patterns for representing experience in the different phases of note taking?  What do these patterns tell us about how our class processed the experience?  What do these patterns suggest about thinking patterns ethnographers might want to “be careful” about?