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Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography: Method and Applications

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Abstract

Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography (SEBE) is a method designed to access subjective experience. It uses First Person Perspective (FPP) digital recordings as a basis for analytic Replay Interviews (RIW) with the participants. This triggers their memory and enables a detailed step by step understanding of activity: goals, subgoals, determinants of actions, decision-making processes, etc. This paper describes the technique and two applications. First, the analysis of professional practices for know-how transferring purposes in industry is illustrated with the analysis of nuclear power-plant operators’ gestures. This shows how SEBE enables modelling activity, describing good and bad practices, risky situations, and expert tacit knowledge. Second, the analysis of full days lived by Polish mothers taking care of their children is described, with a specific focus on how they manage their eating and drinking. This research has been done on a sub-sample of a large scale intervention designed to increase plain water drinking vs sweet beverages. It illustrates the interest of SEBE as an exploratory technique in complement to other more classic approaches such as questionnaires and behavioural diaries. It provides the detailed “how” of the effects that are measured at aggregate level by other techniques.

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Notes

  1. The most famous is just the moment when Gregory Bateson lights the cigarette of the person he is interviewing.

  2. The final product, MAP, includes also other multimedia resources in order to provide a more complete representation of knowledge embodied in the gesture; e.g. variants, formal procedures, etc.

  3. This research was co-funded by the international research programme of a food industry player (Danone) in cooperation with local health organizations.

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Acknowledgments

This paper benefited from the smart and constructive comments of three anonymous reviewers. It also benefited from a residency for Lahlou at Paris Institute for Advanced Study (France) as a EURIAS senior fellow, with support of the European Union 7th Framework Programme for research (grant agreement n° 246561); of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Networks for Methodological Innovation grant ES/J021350/1; of a Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Dr Sophie Le Bellu PIEF-GA-2012-330709.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Saadi Lahlou & Sophie Le Bellu

  2. Danone Nutricia Research, Palaiseau, France

    Sabine Boesen-Mariani

  3. Paris Institute for Advanced Study, Paris, France

    Saadi Lahlou

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  1. Saadi Lahlou
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  2. Sophie Le Bellu
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Correspondence to Saadi Lahlou.

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Lahlou, S., Le Bellu, S. & Boesen-Mariani, S. Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography: Method and Applications. Integr. psych. behav. 49, 216–238 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9288-9

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