QCast

The “Accidental Ethnographer” – How to Capture Fleeting or Unexpected Opportunities to Harvest Rich Information That Effects Change!

Speaker: Julius Goepp, MD, Founder and Senior Consultant at Lupine Creative Consulting, Inc

Good ethnography is vital to qualitative research – it captures actual lived experiences of a population (as opposed to narrow interests of researchers/sponsors). Most ethnographies are planned well in advance – but qualitative researchers should be “spring-loaded” to capture unexpected opportunities any time, under trying conditions. This webinar shows how “accidental ethnography” is ideally suited to gathering information that matters to your population of interest, producing context-sensitive results that are “surgically” applicable.

We’ll examine several “accidental ethnographies,” introducing Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REA) and showing how informal (and ethical) REAs can (and should) be ready to launch in the hands of prepared qualitative researchers. We’ll use group activities to demonstrate that one world-view definitely does not fit all, especially when trying to understand other people’s lives and decision-making.

Julius Goepp, MD, is Founder and Senior Consultant at Lupine Creative Consulting, Inc, a small but diverse firm that addresses issues in healthcare utilization with a focus on preventive health maintenance services.

Dr. Goepp has specialized in pediatrics, emergency medicine and international health for 23 years, but only developed an appreciation of the value of qualitative research and ethnographic methods as applied to health care utilization in 1995.  Since that time he has sought the teachings and wisdom of medical anthropologists and ethnographic researchers who share his interests in learning about how health services consumers explain, understand, and react to the worlds in which they live.

His goal in the world of qualitative research is to act as a “cultural translator” with his peers in medicine to help them understand and appreciate the power of qualitative research methods, especially ethnography, as they seek to understand the answers to puzzling and frustrating questions about how their patients use (or fail to use) effective health services and products.