Read the extract and then answer the questions

Paul Hodkinson carried out an ethnographic study of goths over four years. As a goth himself, Hodkinson was able to spend time as an ‘insider’ with goths at Whitby weekends, on internet chat rooms, and at small goth events. This enabled him to study the norms, meanings and motivations of the goths. He argued that his long term participation in the goth culture placed him in a strong position to research the group. However, he did say that once he decided to do the research he had to reposition himself, meaning he was now a researcher and would be viewing what was happening through researchers’ eyes as well as through the eyes of the goths. Whilst Hodkinson was at Whitby he distributed a questionnaire on a fairly random basis to 112 people. It had some open-ended questions. He used the data from this to add to the ethnographic data he had collected.

Ethnographers are looking for the meanings and motives that people attach to their actions. They want to be able to ‘walk in the shoes of those being researched’. They are not particularly interested in obtaining statistical data. The questionnaire had a number of open questions which would have given Hodkinson additional qualitative data.