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According to Parker (2005) ethnography “documents the daily life of a person or community ”. Ethnography describes the ideologies, behaviors, relationships, and contextual factors of the people and communities (Lofland, 2002; Wolcott, 1999). Hence, the researcher’s intention in this study was to describe Filipino values amid the current pandemic. Ultimately this study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of Filipino values, specifically how COVID-19 affected the family relations of Filipinos.
Although the core element of ethnography is studying people and their cultures, it is argued that this cannot be solely conducted through participant observation (Scott Jones and Watt, 2010). For this reason, the researcher drew on another research method, like a focus group interview, to produce research with as much contextualization as possible; as it is believed by other stenographers that people’s actions, values, and behaviors can only be understood in context (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007).
The participants of the study were the researchers’ two family members. The researcher selected these participants based on common locality and restrictions brought about by the current pandemic, where the researchers are forced to work remotely in the comfort of their homes. It was premised that these factors combined to produce shared understandings, meanings, and relationships.
Ethnographic research data involved the researcher spending as much time as possible within the area of study to gain an in-depth understanding of the study but because of the challenges brought by COVID-19, the researcher conducted its study on his very home and used participant observation and focus group interview to gather his data. Participant observation on Filipino values, specifically on family relations, was recorded each day for three consecutive days. Whereas, the focus group interview was conducted in a home setting and at the most convenient time for the participants. The interview was between 5 to 10 minutes in duration with the researcher taking notes and was video recorded. Although the term interview is used it is not usually of a formal and structured nature (Atkinson et al., 2001). The interviews that the researcher conducted were conversational, flexible, and open-ended. As an active participant in the research process, the researcher constantly evaluated his role, and his relationship with participants, and applied this to develop an understanding and interpretation (Unger, 2005).
Similarly, focus group data was transcribed (by the researcher), condensed, and summarised as part of the analytical process. The researcher extracted from the data key narratives (Ricoeur, 1983, 1984, 1985) and phenomena, which would most accurately represent the study.
Moreover, narratives were also taken with high importance because they are stories that unfold within the fieldwork process and it is the researcher’s role to elicit key stories from the participants that helped capture and represent the study. These ethnographic narratives will illuminate Filipino relations, their shared values, and understandings. According to Ricoeur, narrating is a person’s means to create meaning and it reveals the identity characteristics of the author and the characters involved while shaping identity at the same time. Narratives can also be seen as a reconstructed perception of life experiences (Lock, 1995). The narrative description is also an important means of imagining and creating the social worlds of which we are a part. The researcher contends that narrative description is the methodological extension of dynamic social theory in that both promote processes of reflectivity, sublimated emotional investment (passion), and creativity.
The researcher transcribed the interview himself. After the transcription, the analysis began by reading through the transcripts. Each transcript was read thoroughly until the researcher felt he had a general understanding of the content. Then, the researcher re-read the findings of the focus group interview and the participant observation notes. The notes helped monitor the subjective experiences of the researcher and their effects on the data. The methods of data collection focus group interviews and participant observation were drawn together and analyzed as a means of checking and synthesizing emerging themes, perspectives, and interpretations (Huberman & Miles, 2002). This also provided an opportunity to link the core elements of the current pandemic and Filipino family relations.
On the other hand, the study was qualitative research in nature. Quantitative researchers use the terms validity and reliability about the quality of their data. However, the use of these terms for qualitative research has been critiqued, as being misleading and inappropriate for the methods, analysis, and data collected in more naturalistic inquiry (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Golafshani, 2003). A multitude of terms have been proposed as being more appropriate, such as credibility, trustworthiness, rigor, dependability, and confirmability, to name but a few. It has been argued that this credibility is the most important factor used to assess the quality of qualitative research (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Several steps or procedures have been suggested by academics to increase the credibility of research, one of which will be discussed.
The researcher used triangulation, which involves using different sources of information and research methods to collect data (Creswell and Miller, 2000; Shenton, 2004). Using a variety of methods produces different data which can then be compared and contrasted (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). In the study, triangulation was achieved by using observation and interviews. Each of these provided data that the researcher could then develop patterns and themes. Triangulation has been critiqued as it assumes that the weakness in one method can be compensated by the strength of another (Mays and Pope, 2000). However, using multiple data collection techniques provided different perspectives and understandings of the same situation, which was family relations. And in the end, triangulation was about constantly comparing the data collected from different sources.
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