Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings or “fields” by methods of data collection which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities, in order to collect data in a systematic manner but without meaning being imposed on them externally – (Brewer)

 It aims at understanding people’s actions and their experiences in terms of meanings of the world, and the ways in which these actions arise from and influence these experiences.

Ethnographic data is primarily in the form of “language extracts” – e.g. field notes, quotes from interviews. Data is predominantly text, in the sense that it is written up in natural language and does not deal with numbers.