ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about some of the arguments used to suggest that ethnographic research can make a greater contribution to policy making than quantitative research. It suggests that the claims sometimes made about the policy payoff of ethnography are excessive in three respects. First, the capacity of ethnographic research to produce valid findings is often overestimated in comparison with that of other approaches. Second, there is the neglect of the limits to the contribution that any research can make to practice. Finally, the chapter considers the idea, present in some proposals for policy-relevant ethnography, that studies may be multi-purpose, simultaneously producing both policy-relevant information and theory, and thereby serving both practitioners and fellow researchers at the same time. It argues that ethnographic research may generate a variety of sorts of product, rather than just one. And while all of them should be policy relevant, this relevance will often be general rather than specific.
