What are data?: Ethnographic experiences with young offenders

Tea Torbenfeldt Bengtsson

doi:10.1177/1468794113488125

What are data? Ethnographic experiences with young offenders

Tea Torbenfeldt Bengtsson

Sociologisk Institut

12 Citationer (Scopus)

Abstract

Drawing on a recent field study in a secure care institution for young offenders, this article analyses how an apparent failure to obtain data was based on pre-established ideals of what ethnographic data are. Despite much recent constructionist ethnographic literature explicitly dealing with the role of the researcher in data collection, little focus is given to how data are constructed in the research process. I thus started my study with ideals of obtaining rich data in the form of extensive written documentation. Shifting my focus to field interaction and relational experiences rather than the actual written documentation created an understanding of data as situational and relationally constructed. While this new understanding of what data are made possible analyses uncovering why certain meaning structures appear, it also revealed non-verbal experiences as valuable data.

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Tidsskrift	Qualitative Research
Vol/bind	14
Udgave nummer	6
Sider (fra-til)	729-744
Antal sider	16
ISSN	1468-7941
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794113488125
Status	Udgivet - 24 dec. 2014

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What are data? Ethnographic experiences with young offenders

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