Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative StudiesHow can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology. "After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis." --Contemporary Sociology "The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume." -Educational Studies |
Contents
Introduction | 5 |
The Failure | 18 |
Understanding and Knowledge | 24 |
Metaphors and MetaEthnography | 33 |
Crisis of Authority Synthesis | 39 |
References | 83 |
Other editions - View all
Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies George W. Noblit,R. Dwight Hare Limited preview - 1988 |
Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies George W. Noblit,R. Dwight Hare Snippet view - 1988 |
Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies George W. Noblit,R. Dwight Hare Snippet view - 1988 |
Common terms and phrases
academic achieve adolescence aggregate aggregate patterns analogy analysis Anthropology argues assumption audience biracialism bureaucratic order Chapter classrooms Clifford clinical inference Collins and Noblit comparative concerned context create criteria critique culture Cusick Derek Freeman Desegregated Schools desegregation ethnographies develop egalitarian egalitarian ideal emic enable essentially ethnic ethnographic accounts ethnographic synthesis evaluation Everhart explicit focus focused Fono Freeman Geertz groups high school holistic human discourse Institute of Education integrative research reviews interaction interest interpretive explanation interpretive paradigm interpretivism interpretivists involves issue knowledge line of argument lines-of-argument synthesis Margaret Mead Mead Mead's meaning meta meta-analysis meta-ethnographic synthesis meta-ethnography metaphoric reductions Metz negotiated order Newbury Park perspectives political positivists practice principal qualitative research qualitative studies reciprocal translations relations relationships research synthesis result reveals Rist Samoa Schofield and Sagar school desegregation social explanation structure substantive teachers Temple University theory of social translation of studies Turner understanding white flight Wolcott writing