Manual on Brief Ethnographic Interviewing: Understanding an Issue, Problem or Idea from a Local Perspective

The brief ethnographic interviewing methods described in this manual were originally developed for use by NGO’s providing psychosocial and mental health interventions to address two recurring needs – how to quickly and systematically gather and organize information (needs, problems, beliefs, strengths, etc.) when implementing programs with new populations or communities or develop culturally relevant indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of psychosocial and mental health interventions.

The technique involves using a brief semi-structured interview, framed around a question, to systematically collect information on a specific topic of interest from a community or population. The responses collected with the interview become ‘data’ which can be summarized through a variety of human and/or statistical means to identify common underlying themes.