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Ethnographers studying health experiences immerse themselves in social contexts of illness and treatment for prolonged periods of fieldwork to collect descriptive data and form an understanding of local culture and embodied experience. They pay very close attention to the experiences and interpretations of members of the group in question, studied in their natural context, and typically go for a depth of understanding (a small sample size studied intensively) rather than large sample sizes and attempts at statistical generalizability. The most distinctive method that ethnographers use is participant observation, which involves becoming a part of the everyday life and activities of a particular community, forming ongoing personal relationships, and observing social interaction and community life from the inside. Ethnographic studies typically use open-ended, and often informal, narrative interviewing of social actors to learn about their personal experiences, their views on social practices, and their broader perceptions and opinions (see Chapter 5). Prolonged participant observation also reveals what people actually do in their activities and the nature of their social contexts. Ethnographers consider it important to study what people actually do as well as what they say they do, which may be different. Ethnographic research may be overt or covert. However, covert ethnography (in which subjects are not informed about the research) raises many difficult ethical questions and it is increasingly difficult to make an ethical case and gain ethical clearance for such studies. More often, the ethnographer forms a relationship with a gate-keeper (a local person in a …