Research Blog Exploration 2

The short reading I selected was “Ethnography of Police Work in an Affluent Community.” Otis Jeffrey White wrote it. I think the general purpose of the paper was to study the behavior and the culture of the police force, specifically in a well off community. He used the traditional method of referencing books, including the date of publishing, as well as the page number. Also after some trivial means of gaining access to it, he also used field research. I would say both methods are good ways of gaining the information he was looking for, but the ride-along ended up providing much more relevant information for his paper and was by far the most successful method.

I would say the advantages of the second method are numerous. Typically you can glean basic everyday information from past written works, which is a good starting point. But to get the real story on what is going on, you have to be as close as possible to what you are researching. He was able to determine without a doubt that both of his subjects were indeed real cops regardless of whatever the general belief of the public was. He was also very surprised that both cops followed protocol up until the point of determining what the actual penalty would be for the violator. In the end though, both methods worked. Another benefit of being up close and personal with his subjects was the ability to inject some humor into the paper from the dialogue he had with them. I personally loved the extra categories every age range in school had. Especially that some of them were classified that way based on rumor and hearsay. I don’t think there were any disadvantages because he chose to use more than one method to research. If he stuck with just the written works, I don’t think he would have been able to relate to the specifics of that particular town as well. I also felt that he answered most of the questions and changed any pre-conceived notions he may have had going into the research.

Personally I like both methods of research. I am an empirical type of person, but am also able to get and understand the information from books, the Internet or whatever other written source you may use. I hope that we are able to have assignments in the future that are similar to this. Being able to choose, even if restricted to six or seven options, was very nice.