ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. This book presents concrete examples of practical ethnographic research and provides guidelines for using this type of research in intervention programs relating to health, community development and other applied topics. The data-gathering methods It describes should be useful to researchers from various disciplines, including anthropology, education, epidemiology, public health, sociology and others. Although the focus on methods in this book is primarily 'non-academic', all of the basic techniques presented here are also widely used in academic studies, including that centrally important genre master's and doctoral dissertation research. From the comments of author about positivism, realism, and constructivism he have pointed out that most of the philosophical issues concerning the 'scientificness' of social science research in general are not of much concern in applied ethnographic research. Those are mostly 'academic issues' and need not interfere with the practical concerns of applied, problem-solving studies.
