Meta-Ethnography

Meta-ethnography is an approach to synthesizing qualitative studies, allowing interpretations to be made across a set of studies (Noblit & Hare, 1988). In contrast to quantitative META-ANALYSIS (Glass, 1977), meta-ethnography does not aggregate data across studies as this ignores the context-specificnature of qualitative research. Instead, meta-ethnography involves synthesizing the interpretations across qualitative studies in which context itself is also synthesized. The approach allows for the development of more interpretive literature reviews, critical examinations of multiple accounts of similar phenomena, systematic comparisons of case studies to allow interpretive cross-case conclusions, and more formal syntheses of ethnographic studies. In all these uses, meta-ethnography is both inductive and interpretive. It begins with the studies and inductively derives a synthesis by translating ethnographic and/or qualitative accounts into the terms of each other to inductively derive a new interpretation of the studies taken collectively.

A meta-ethnography is accomplished through seven phases. First, one starts by identifying an intellectual interest that can be addressed by synthesizing qualitative studies. Second, it is necessary to decide what is relevant to the intellectual interest by considering what might be learned and for which audiences. Third, after conducting an exhaustive search for relevant studies, one reads the studies in careful detail. Fourth, it is necessary to consider the relationships of the studies to one another by making lists of key metaphors, phrases, ideas, and concepts and their relations to one another. The relationships may be reciprocal (similarity between studies is evident), refutational (studies oppose each other), or line of argument (studies of parts infer a whole). Fifth, the studies are translated into one another in the form of an analogy that one account is like the other except in some ways. Sixth, the translations are synthesized into a new interpretation that accounts for the interpretations in the different studies. Seventh, the synthesis is expressed or represented in some form appropriate to the audience of the synthesis: text, play, video, art, and so on.

For example, Derek Freeman's refutation of Margaret Mead's ethnography of Samoa was covered in the popular media in the 1980s. Freeman's (1983) account was an attempt to discredit the work of Mead (1928), but the refutational synthesis in Noblit and Hare (1988) reveals that the studies come from different time periods, different paradigms of anthropology, different genders, and even different Samoas (American vs. Western). In short, the studies do not refute each other. They teach about different aspects of Samoan culture. Freeman's claim that he refutes Mead and Mead's claim to refute biological determinism both fail. Meta-ethnography, then, is a powerful tool used to reconsider what ethnographies are to mean to us taken together.