The ethnographic approach: characteristics and uses in gerontological nursing.

Ethnography presents the researcher with a methodology for studying meaning carefully; a process for going beyond what is seen or heard to infer what people know by careful listening and observation of behavior, environment, and context. Ethnography describes and explains both regularities and variations in human behavior; the method accommodates the careful description of irregularities in a complex society that may not be or cannot be explained in traditional theory. Ethnography can strengthen traditional methods of theory development generally and gerontological nursing specifically. The descriptive value of ethnography as a qualitative research method to generate concepts, theories, and hypotheses in substantive knowledge areas within gerontological nursing is recognized.