Ethnography is one of the many qualitative research approaches in the social sciences. It involves tools that can be applied to policy and public services to generate insights that can give you opportunities for change and innovation. It is part of an approach called ‘design thinking’ which applies the techniques and innovation processes used in design to improve policy making and implementation.
It’s sometimes called ‘user-centred’ or ‘empathetic’ research because ethnography starts with understanding people from inside their world. It aims to analyse not just people’s experiences (for example how they engage with public services) but also the underlying social and cultural structures that lie behind their behaviour.
Traditional ethnographic research in anthropology and sociology usually involves participant observation – where a researcher is deeply immersed into a community’s world, often for long periods. Over the last 20 years, new, less intensive, ethnographic research methods have been developed and applied to policy and public service design as well as organisations such as Intel and Microsoft. These are usually thought of as ‘ethnographically-informed’ as they take less time, and require fewer resources and less expertise, than academic ethnography.
While statistical evidence can explain what is happening, ethnography can tell us why. A few interviews can provide an enormous amount of rich data, and therefore do not need to be representative. It does not try to understand what is happening across the country, or try to get a large sample so it can make generalisations about people with different characteristics. Rather, it tries to understand individual’s lives and create insight so we can explain why people are behaving in certain ways understood in the context of their whole lives.
You can gain insights in all sorts of ways, from observing how people do things in real life, identifying themes or patterns embedded in personas or profiles of people, or discussing ideas generated by participants in a workshop.
What remains consistent, however, are 3 things:
- the intention to look at things as a whole from the perspectives of people, rather than systems or organisations
- the commitment to being there with people, in their world
- the importance of generating insights from analysing the data – ethnographic research may involve describing aspects of people’s lives or telling their stories, but its real power lies in the iterative grounded analysis of the themes from these data
Examples of best practice
The Government Digital Service has been using ethnography and user research to create the award-winning GOV.UK and its 25 exemplar services. You can read more about their work.
The Policy Lab is a demonstrator project that is working with civil servants in a number of government departments to test out these techniques in policy making. They have been using ethnographic research in the following ways.
Looking at things from the point of view of people not taking up a public service
Policymakers in the Department for Education (DfE) are using an ethnographic approach to understand the needs of families with young children who are not taking up the provision of free nursery places. Working with an ethnographer and Policy Lab, the team is conducting qualitative interviews with parents of 2-year olds to understand their lives in depth. The resulting analysis will be used to help DfE reframe its understanding of their needs. It should provide a much stronger basis to identify gaps in the ways services are designed and delivered and users are engaged with.
Thinking about a policy area in a new way
For example, the Ministry of Justice’s family law team used an ethnographically-informed approach to understand the experiences of people using mediation services to settle disputes following divorce or separation. Specialist researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with people who had used mediation services. Using data from the interviews, they then created personas and visual maps of these people’s journeys through separation or divorce and pulled out insights across the interviews. These insights then helped the policy makers and representatives from the mediation sector, including judges, lawyers, mediators and others, focus on users’ perspectives and needs as they developed new approaches to providing mediation services.
Sparking ideas
The Home Office commissioned ethnographic research into how people experienced reporting crime. One of the victims of crime was a victim of anti-social behaviour who had been asked to keep a diary. When a researcher visited her home to do an interview, the researcher asked her where she kept the diary (in her bedside cabinet) and when she wrote in it (before she went to bed). This sparked the idea of an online diary which people could update at any time of the day, and know that the police could see it immediately.
Uncovering opportunities by reframing an intended policy direction
HMRC conducted ethnographically informed interviews with young people to find out how they valued national insurance and other government services. An important insight was that young people would be more likely to keep their national insurance number safe if they accessed it when they were ready to use it, rather than being given it at some point before their 16th birthday. This has led HMRC to think about providing it in a different way.
When to use/not use ethnography
Use ethnography:
at the early stage of exploring an issue when your research is still relatively open
to build on quantitative research to help you understand in more depth why people behave in a particular way, which that research has not illuminated
when you are grappling with a social issue that is fast moving
when you want to find opportunities for innovation by gathering insights about things in people’s worlds that are connected for them, but may not appear so obviously connected from government’s point of view
when you want to reframe a problem or generate insights that would not have emerged through more traditional civil service analytical techniques
when you want to uncover opportunities for new services
Don’t use ethnography:
- when you want to have statistically valid data
Issues to be aware of
success depends on having clearly defined goals and a well-defined problem, but often engaging with people involved in the issue surfaces new understandings of the problem – as a result, your understanding of the problem, and the way you frame it is likely to change during the project
ethnography gathers lots of data and it can take a lot of time to analyse it
ethnography can sometimes seem a bit unfocused because the researcher looks at someone’s life as a whole, and what they are saying and doing; but this is central to the approach
How to use ethnographic research and generate insights
- Decide on a research question.
- Decide on the approach.
- Decide on the methods and tools.
- Gather and analyse data iteratively.
- Identify patterns and themes in the data.
- Summarise insights.
- Share insights.
Tools
| Tool | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Personas | £0 | 1 hour |
| Journey mapping | £0-£5000 | 2 hours |
| Interviews | £0- £20,000 | 1 hour per interview plus around 2 hours analysis per interview, plus at least 4 hours identifying themes across all the interviews |
Personas
Introduction
This explains how to create rough-and-ready ‘personas’ or simple profiles of people to bring in a focus on people in a policy project. This helps explore a policy problem and generate ideas from the perspectives of people involved in or affected by it.
Using personas has a long history in product and software development. Sometimes personas are based on interview or other data, to bring to life a segment of a population whose lives will be affected by a policy development. Sometimes they are not based on evidence, but instead are created by combining characteristics of people. Either approach helps a group of people working on an issue to introduce and maintain a focus on people.
The main reasons to use personas are:
to create empathy between policy makers and those people whose lives are or could be shaped by the issue being explored or the solutions being considered
to have a different kind of conversation about a policy area that starts with the people experiencing the issue or proposed policy interventions, rather than the system
When to use this tool:
when you want to get people to start looking at an issue from the perspective of people involved
when you want to involve and get knowledge insights from people who have knowledge of the policy area, especially the lives of people connected with it, including front line staff or volunteers
if you want to build momentum and interest in a policy area and in possible solutions
when your understanding of the policy problem is still fuzzy
When not to use this tool:
when you want statistically robust evidence
when you have undertaken rigorous ethnographic research
Personas are usually created in a set. You might create between 6 and 10 different personas that capture distinct aspects of a population.
There is always a danger when creating personas that they become stereotypes that prevent understanding and limit the generation of ideas. The best way to avoid this is to involve people in creating personas who have first-hand knowledge of the lives of people affected by the issue. For example this could be by being people who are or could be affected by a policy intervention, or other people who work with them such as clinicians, police officers, social workers, volunteers, or other front line staff or volunteers. Alternatively you can use qualitative data, eg from interviews, to shape the creation of a set of personas.
How to create and use personas in a 1-hour workshop
Before the workshop you should:
- gather some A3 or flipchart paper, sticky notes and marker pens
- consider using one of the many persona templates available – see the list of resources below and if so have print-outs available
At the workshop:
- give people permission to be creative and work differently with an icebreaker
- set a challenge or ask people to define their own challenge
- ask people to work individually or in small teams of no more than 4 to 5 people to create a persona (someone who is involved in the issue or challenge) by drawing and writing on the paper
- depending on what you are trying to achieve, you might ask them to describe specific aspects to bring the persona character to life: you can do this by calling out each of these aspects one by one, allowing each team to discuss and agree things like their:
- name, age, sex, ethnicity, religion
- current situation (work/life/community)
- backstory (work/life/community)
- current challenges and barriers to addressing them
- a typical day
- an object that’s important to them
- expectations
- fears
- resources and skills
- people and organisations they are connected to
- communications/media usage and preferences
- get teams to present their personas one by one, with other people giving constructive feedback, adding further detail or challenging a persona if it feels false or stereotyped
- discuss whether the current mix of personas captures the main differences in the population you are thinking about – do you need to create some more?
- discuss any themes emerging - are people presented as having needs or capacities? If you have qualitative data relating to the policy issue, how do these personas compare with that analysis? Do they suggest directions for new research?
After the workshop
- share photos of the persona set
- summarise the themes generated across the persona set
Other resources
Journey mapping
Introduction
This shows how to use journey mapping to understand and describe someone’s experiences in relation to a policy area over time, such as a transition in their life from working to not working, ageing or ill health. Mapping people’s journeys helps policy makers focus on experiences of people who are affected by or involved in a policy area as users or involved delivering in a public service.
Using this method helps a group of people understand holistically people’s interactions over time with a range of services or organisations from the perspective of a specific user, customer, stakeholder or employee. It helps clarify what the experience is made up of, for that individual, allowing the team to identify important patterns and pain points.
Doing journey mapping does not replace doing qualitative or quantitative research. Instead, it helps orient a team at the beginning of a project towards people’s subjective experiences. You can do journey mapping individually or support people to do this within workshops.
The main reasons to map people’s journeys are:
- to create a broader understanding of a policy issue from the perspective of particular people experiencing it
- to identify quickly opportunities for improvement
- to broaden the range of participants able to contribute to identifying problems or creating solutions
You can use this tool in a workshop when you are at the early stage of understanding an issue from the perspective of people involved. You can also adapt the tool and use it when doing interviews with people, asking them to map out their journey to help explain their experiences to you.
When to use this tool:
when you have little time or money, and you want to understand an issue from the perspective of citizens, users or frontline staff
when you want to involve a range of people in exploring an issue, some of whom have deep knowledge of the lives of people and some of whom may be operations or delivery-focused
when your understanding of a policy problem is still unclear
When not to use this tool:
when you want evidence based on a rigorous qualitative research methodology
when you have a clearly defined policy problem that you have iterated several times
Policy Lab has enabled civil servants to do journey mapping in relation to these kinds of challenges:
- how to better support people who have a health condition and are at risk of leaving work because of it
- describing the experiences of people who have been a victim of a crime and how, and why they do or do not report it to the police
- identifying opportunities to support parents of children with special educational needs
- to help scope a project that aims to support people going through divorce or separation to use mediation services rather than going to court
What you’ll need:
- long rolls of paper
- sticky notes
- bluetack
- good quality fine point marker pens – they make everyone’s drawings look good
How to do journey mapping in a 1 hour workshop
- Stick up several long pieces of paper on the wall before you start – 1 for each team.
- Give people permission to be creative and work differently with an icebreaker.
- Set a challenge or ask people to define their own challenge (see challenge setting tool).
- Ask people to work in small teams of 2 to 3 people.
- You could also start with a persona creating exercise to help participants think about the issue as a whole
- Ask teams to pick 1 person whose journey they want to map. They should map out on the long piece of paper the key phases of this person’s journey as they experience the issue.
- Encourage participants to maintain a strong focus on the person’s activities and their interactions with service touchpoints during the journey.
- Ask participants to describe things in the user’s terms and language, rather than that of government. If data is available from research, then share this and invite people to use it. If not, use team members’ knowledge to create a rich, complete picture of a specific user interacting with public or other organisation or service over time.
- Prompt participants to provide lots of detail, however apparently mundane or unimportant. What is obvious to one person may provoke valuable insights in another.
- Ask them to identify emotional highs and lows.
- Get people to identify opportunities for improvements to service touchpoints or other kinds of interaction, or where no touchpoint exists but it would improve the experience.
- Invite participants to share their journey maps with one another.
- Discuss themes emerging across all the ideas people have generated.
Other resources
Interviews
Introduction
This describes how to carry out interviewing that is informed by ethnography. This approach aims to generate insight into people’s lives, from their points of view and in their own language and categories, rather than government’s or from the perspective of a service provider.
When to use this tool:
when you do not have resources to hire external specialist researchers, but want to jump into a policy problem quickly
when you want to get first hand access to people who have knowledge of the policy area, especially the lives of people connected with it, including front line staff or volunteers
when your understanding of the policy problem is still fuzzy
When not to use this tool:
when you want statistically robust evidence
when you have resources to involve specialist researchers
When doing interviews and analysing the data you should also be aware of:
your own bias – it’s inevitable that this will shape your interpretations but there are methods to minimise this
ethics – you need to get people’s informed consent to being interviewed, agree how to refer to them or anonymise them, and minimise any harm to them from interviewing them.
the work and expertise involved in interpreting the data – the real value of an ethnographic approach is to identify patterns and themes that emerge as you immerse yourself in the person’s world, and in the data you capture and discover what’s underneath the people’s stories
Examples
Policy Lab has helped civil servants do interviews at the early stage of developing policy to:
- get a deeper understanding of the issue from the first hand perspective of people involved in or affected by it
Department of Health and Department of Work and Pensions wanted to find out how to help people manage their health conditions in work more effectively. They commissioned ethnographers to conduct ethnographically informed interviews with people with health conditions, GPs, employers and Job Centre Plus staff to understand better how they experienced the process of transitioning (or supporting people to transition) in and out of work.
- capture ideas from the perspectives of experts, or people affected by the issue, grounded in their knowledge and experience
For example when interviewing people at risk of leaving work because of their health conditions, researchers asked them “what would have helped?” which elicited practical solutions based in people’s day-to-day realities about what would work for them.
How to do ethnographically-informed interviews
Although these guidelines are written as a sequential list, some of these activities may happen in parallel.
Decide on research questions.
Using sticky notes on a large piece of paper, map out all the things you know and don’t know in relation to the policy area. There may be lots of existing research that gives you a partial picture. Some of that research might exist outside the civil service. You might want to do this with colleagues or with other people close to the policy area.
Define around 3 to 5 research questions. This is not the list of things you want to ask people during the interviews – it’s the things you need to find out in order to advance your project.
Review these with colleagues and refine them.
Decide on whom you need to interview
Identify the people you want to interview. Summarise this in a recruitment brief specifying the variables that are relevant.
Work out how you can recruit or reach them. You may want to approach delivery and operations colleagues in the civil service, community or voluntary groups, or local authorities to do this.
If possible, go and visit people somewhere that is convenient to them where they feel safe or that is part of their world. This will give you valuable insights into the context in which they live, study or work.
Decide on your interview approach
There are several kinds of interview technique available. You could:
use a framework to guide the questions – eg you could adapt a persona or user journey template to help you identify a set of things you want to find about about in relation to phases of their experience with the policy area
use semi-structured interviews – this is where you prepare in advance some questions that you plan to ask the person, but remain open to where the conversation flows
do participant observation – this is where you spend some time accompanying the person in their day to day life: ideally you need at least several hours or a day for this
think about how you will capture - with notes, recordings or photos – and use the data from the interview, eg sharing, permission to record, storing and disposing of it
ask people to take photographs, for example on their phone, to share with you something about how they experience the aspect of their life you are interested in
decide if you want to do a follow-up interview with the same person, to check your understanding of what emerged in the first one, or go into more depth into particular areas
Decide on your approach to ethics
get or create an informed consent form which you will ask people to read and sign at the beginning of your interview: the principle of informed consent is that people know they are being talked to as part of some research, and that they can withdraw at any time
clarify if the person is happy for their name and other details to be used when the research is shared – give them an opportunity to remain anonymous by changing their name
ensure that you will not harm the people involved by interviewing them, for example by giving them expectations about future policy actions
Do the interview: gather data
introduce yourself and explain the research – build up trust with the person you are interviewing and confirm how long you expect to take
get the participant’s informed consent to the interview, either by asking them to sign your form or, if using audio or video, you can record the person giving their consent
depending on your research questions and the kind of interview you are doing, you might take up to an hour or 90 minutes
right after the interview, make some notes about your impressions and the main themes in the discussion you had, also noting down anything that surprised you
Afterwards: analyse and interpret the data
You can do this individually or with other people:
assemble the materials you gathered from all your interviews – notes, photos, audio clips – and think back to the location and situation of the interview, reflecting on anything that seemed distinct to that part of that world
write down words or phrases that capture the sense of what you are hearing or seeing – this is called coding the data and might take several hours
write down quotations from what the person said that exemplify a key point
review all your codes and identify those that recur in several places or which seem related
summarise the themes or patterns emerging across the codes into phrases or short sentences
present your findings to a broader group of people to triangulate them
ensure that the notes you’ll share anonymise the person you interviewed, if that’s what you agreed with them
Other resources
The service innovation handbook
Design Council - improving patient experience in A and E
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