Institutional Ethnography as a Method of Inquiry: A Scoping Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this scoping review is to examine the extent, range, and nature of the use of institutional ethnography (IE) as a method of inquiry in peer-reviewed journal publications. Fifteen databases were searched between the years of 2003 and 2013. Relevant data were extracted from 179 included articles. Findings relate to nine key areas including year of publication, authorship and geography, types of journals, format of resources, authors’ descriptions of how they used IE, approaches used in conjunction with IE, data collection methods, standpoint, and institutional relations. Institutional ethnography was diversely conceptualized as: a (sociological) method of inquiry, methodology, research approach, feminist sociology, theory and methodology, framework, lens, field, perspective, and form of analysis. Inevitably, authors applied IE differently across their research and writing, ranging from direct usage or close adherence to IE in a comprehensive manner; to indirect usage or loose adherence to IE by drawing on it as inspiration, guidance, or influence; or borrowing from a certain facet of IE such as a particular theory, concept, method, tool, or analytic strategy. Additionally, some authors adapted IE to suit a specific purpose, which entailed using modified versions of IE to fit a given context or objective, while others strived to extend existing understandings of IE through critique, explanation, review, elaboration, or reflection. The results from this study are useful to both beginning and experienced institutional ethnographers, as the insights gained provide clarity about the use of IE, identify trends in its application, and raise additional questions.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.119 | 0.267 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.052 | 0.051 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".