Ethnographic Report:

You will write one report based on your own ethnographic research. The assignment is simple. You must interview two people about their community concerning the most pressing needs of the community.

You should try to interview people who are not close friends or family members. Challenge yourself a bit in this regard. You should get your interviewees to define their community for you as they perceive it.

In some cases you may define the community yourself if you have specific target in mind like an organization, your place of work etc. However, make sure that if you have a specific target community in mind, that you interview people from that community.

You need to get your interviewees to define their community specifically -- the US or Washington State is too broad. Your task it to get your informants to discuss these three questions: What are most pressing needs of the community? Why do they think those needs are most important?

What do they think should be done about it? The report should be five double-spaced pages with proper essay forma. There are no references required. This is 25% of your grade.

Excellent papers put some significant thought into choosing informants and communities. Your interviewees do not need to be from the same community. Interviews need to be about 20 mins. or more. If you get a less communicative informant, then you may need to move on to another -- not all people make great informants.

The main point of the exercise is to practice qualitative ethnographic interviews about community needs. I've gotten some excellent papers in the past on work places, homeless communities, neighborhood children, military units etc. I recommend that you start on this assignment as soon as you've covered the first five basic lessons and take your time selecting informants.

This assignment can be a lot of fun to do, and they are often interesting to grade. That said, papers that simply "go through the motions" and address the basics of the assignment without much thought will not get a good grade. Keep in mind that the grading rubric is for the minimum requirements of the assignmnet.