An ethnographic interview is an in-depth interview with a person of another
culture in order to begin understanding his or her worldview, beliefs and life
situation. Ethnographic interviewing helps a person begin to understand another
culture while helping to avoid merely stereotyping individuals.
Chapter 6 of the book Change: Mission and Ministry Across Cultures by E. Allen
Sorum (WELS Outreach Resources, 1997) is a guide to the principals of ethnographic interviews as part of an outreach program. Pages 152 ff. also
supply a "model ethnographic interview" and sample questions. You should use the
model given as a guide for your interviews.
The ethnographic interview process is useful in several ways. It gives current
and grassroots information about the group you are interested in. It teaches the
interviewer good listening skills. It also provides objective data from which an
outreach program can be planned. To ensure this latter result, however, it is
important to write out a complete detailed account of each interview. This will
help prevent the interviewer from focusing on a few bits that he feels are key
to the exclusion of the other data.
Normally, several dozen ethnographic interviews are necessary to begin to get a
grasp of a culture For the purposes of this course, however, you are required to
do only a single ethnographic interview per culture. Make sure you write out as
complete an account of the interview as possible as part of your work.