Ethnographic Research, Inc. is a group of sociologists and anthropologists who spend time with people to find out how products and services fit into their lives. By participating in our study you'll be helping us understand what's important to you and how products and services fit into your life.

Most people enjoy participating, and we want you to have fun. It is very casual. We do interviews, but they are open-ended and conversational. We won't ask you to rate things on a scale from one to ten nor ask if you are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with product X. We just want to understand how products and services fit into the lives of real people. We know that you are the expert on your life, and we just want to learn from you.

Our research always involves being there as you go about the business of your daily life. Sometimes the study is very general, and so we'll hang out with you as you go about your day. We might be around while you're folding clothes, running errands, whatever you'd normally do (and we'll even help out when we can). Other times, we have more specific things we'd like to see. We might have a project about cooking for instance, so it makes sense to see you cook. It is pretty straight-forward. Our main goal is to see you (and, depending on the study, your family, your friends, or your co-workers) in the real world, doing the things you normally do.

There are a few other things that are good to know. We often need people with specific characteristics in our studies, so we might call and ask you some questions to see if you qualify for the research. If you don't qualify for one project, you might qualify for the next one, so we'll usually keep you in mind for studies down the road.

We work in teams of two, and one of us always has a video camera. The video is used for our analysis (so we can remember the details of what happens!) and to show our clients what we found. You can tell us to stop recording at any time.

The amount of time it takes varies depending on our study, but in general, you can plan on our visit lasting about three hours. Last but not least, as a thank you for letting us into your lives, participation usually involves a monetary incentive of some sort. This also varies depending on the study.