Parts That Even Ethnography Cannot Reach Some reflections on the relationship between research and policy

Over the past twenty years methodological fashion in many of the social sciences has swung from quantitative to qualitative methods. The value of the latter is now widely accepted, and in some fields there may even be a danger that qualitative work will largely supplant quantitative research. One aspect of the popularity of ethnography, which has been given increasing emphasis in the current cold economic climate, is the belief that this method offers a better source of information for social and educational policymaking than does quantitative research. It is claimed that it provides a more relevant understanding of social events than quantitative research, and that it offers evidence in a form which is much more accessible and useful to policy-makers than are statistical analyses. In this way, ethnographers seek to capitalise on the failure of quantitative research to meet the expectations once held for it (Rist 1984; Pollard 1984a; Finch 1986).