An ethnographic research simply means studying a population that carries patterns of culture among the individuals within a specific culture. The culture may consist of divergent ethnic, religious, and racial groups too. Since ethnographic research aims at targeting the whole population, there is a need to acquire a sample from all the existing groups within the population under study. Since ethnographic research is quite different from the case study and does not contain explicit and pre-supposed beginning and ending, the whole process is conducted with spontaneity without prescription of the time limit.
Therefore, the research creates many hurdles during the process. One of the most significant hurdles behind recruiting the sample of participants includes the selection of the representative who can give proper time to the whole process of the study of their cultural traits, including norms, mores, values, folkways, festivals, language, and cults. If a participant refuses to participate in the further research procedure, the whole research may be at stake.
In the same way, too many biased and prejudiced participants may create harm to the research procedure by hurting others and refusing to pay due heed to the researcher’s code of conduct as well as basic research ethics. “Ethnographic research,” American Anthropological association submits, “may involve significant risks of harm-for example, discrimination, disruption of personal and family relationships, loss of rights or claims, civil or criminal prosecution-usually as the result of disclosure of private, identifiable information such as data gathered in interviews, filmed on video, or recorded on tape or field notes.”
Moreover, every relevant group from the population must be given representation in the research process, which sometimes becomes very difficult because the divergent ethnic groups refuse to take part in such activity, which maintains other ethnic groups too. Quota sampling is applied while conducting the research in an ethnically diversified population.