This paper addresses the problem of ‘production-quality’ CSCW software development where software is developed from an agreed statement of the system requirements. In particular, we are concerned with ways in which requirements specifications for CSCW systems can be developed and with the integration of ethnography into traditional specification methods. Existing approaches to requirements engi...

Development of a culture of evidence based medicine depends on a body of research that draws from both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Recent BMJ articles have usefully questioned a stark polarity between qualitative and quantitative research and helped to demystify qualitative approaches. 3 4 There has been little mention of ethnography, however, and little argument for its use in hea...

This paper attempts to contribute to the positivist-interpretivist and rigor-relevance debates in IS research. We accomplish this by reflecting on the implications of symbolic interactionist ethnography for enriching interpretive research, and by highlighting how the adaptation of the “constant comparison” technique from grounded theory may help move the ethnography study towards theoretical in...

In this article, the author outlines the need for a critical research method in the field of health promotion to explore the determinants of health. These determinants, including healthy child development, employment and working conditions, and education, for example, underlie many of the health issues that individuals experience. They are, in turn, influenced by nebulous factors such as patter...

This article is a reflection on a year of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and around a lesbian and gay community center in London. The research was concerned with the ways in which working class lesbian and bisexual women experience the meanings of their sexual identities on an everyday basis. I conducted participant observation in a variety of settings. Activities I took part in included v...

Based on the experience of researching and writing a book on urban policing in France and its reception by the media and various audiences, this essay discusses the challenges facing a public ethnography—distinguished from public sociology or anthropology. First, I differentiate two tasks (popularizing and politicizing) and multiple publics (imagined or encountered). Second, I plead for the exp...

There has been a lot of interest in ethnography within human–computer interaction over the last two decades, and its relevance within systems development is today beyond question. However, one of the challenges reported is that ethnography generates findings and knowledge with such contextual richness that it can be hard to transfer into system design. In the light of recent years’ push for the...