Research Setting

The research setting can be seen as the physical, social, and cultural site in which the researcher conducts the study. In qualitative research, the focus is mainly on meaning-making, and the researcher studies the participants in their natural setting. The contrast with postpositivist, experimental, and quantitative research settings lies in the fact that here the investigator does not attempt to completely control the conditions of the study in a laboratory setting, instead focusing on situated activities that locate her or him in the context.

For example, in traditional ethnographic studies, the observer becomes immersed in the community that she or he is studying. Historically, through the colonial project, such settings were where the “natives” lived in the study of “other” cultures conducted by missionaries and state-sponsored researchers, a tradition continued later by Western anthropologists. However, Indigenous research practices are now framed against imperialist oppressive research, raising questions of power and privilege at the intersection of race, gender, caste, class, and sexuality. These play a significant role in determining the subject of study, the participants, and thereby the setting. Ethnographic research now emphasizes the embeddedness and reflexivity of the researcher in the cultural setting of the participants. In such studies, the influence of cultural behavior in the understanding of a phenomenon gets recognized and, therefore, is central in defining the setting.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, among others, has redefined research practices through challenging who studies whom and where. Research setting, then, can refer to a geographical site where the participants of a study reside. Or, it could be a group that is being studied. It could be the everyday lives that we live and study, the films that we watch, the texts that we analyze, the feelings that we interrogate, the bodies in which we reside, and the myriad interpretations and constructions of reality and the world that we, as researchers, are constantly trying to negotiate and “re-present.” More recently, performance (auto)ethnography has introduced the idea of the self as the context and setting for [Page 788]research. Through the use of “mystory” and other formats, researchers such as Norman Denzin have talked about their selves, turning points in their lives, their epiphanies, and their times of trouble in reflexive ways using various techniques of telling. They have situated their selves and their bodies as the sites of research and study.

Participatory collaborative research now considers the setting as beyond the group that is performing and conducting the research in dialogue with the researcher and has moved toward including the larger sociocultural field in which we lie embedded as researchers and participants with the goal of social change. Global ethnographies talk about how the global is embedded in the local; thus, when we talk of a specific local research setting, we also need to acknowledge that the setting is now truly global. These local–global studies, illustrated in the work of Michael Buroway and others, now emphasize the need for multiple sites and settings in understanding larger issues that challenge our world and remain the focus of qualitative research practices.

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