Intrinisic ethnographic enquiry: towards a general practice research methodology

Abstract

Ethnography is a term that is generically applied to the study of populations into which the researcher has traditionally entered as an interloper, and then gradually been accepted in various ways: “The ethnographer participates overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions, in fact, collecting whatever data is available to throw light on the issues with which he or she is concerned”.¹ This sounds very much like what a general practitioner does all day.