inI'm developing a proposal to qualitatively explore the impact of a new drug for use in HIV prevention, and need some advice about the unusual method I'm thinking of: -
'PreP' (Pre-exposure Prophylaxis) is a new once-a-day drug treatment that can stop a person contracting HIV. Various international drug trials are concluding the effectiveness of the drug, it is already licensed in the USA and is expected to become available in the UK soon for gay & bisexual men and other 'high-risk' demographics and individuals.
What we lack now is understanding of the ways in which this bio-medical innovation is likley to be adopted psycho-socially: - Will people using PreP dislcose that to sexual partners; will its use displace cultures of condom use; what impact might PreP have on individuals' HIV anxiety; what are the personal and social implications of further medicalising sex; etc, etc.
I want to propose a version of auto-ethnography in which we recruit gay and bisexual men who are prescribed PreP, briefly train them to collect their own experience (via written text and voice recording), and invite them to develop a collaborative auto-ethnography of their experience of PreP over 6(?) months. Their data would be returned to the research office for transcription and subject to Grounded Theory Analysis coding conceptual categories.
I'm a Qualy researcher in sexual health but not an ethnographer, and I think this approach would be quite a departure from conventional methods of auto-ethnography, so I have three broad questions: -
1/. Does this sound a viable method?
2/. Could such an approach reasonably be termed 'auto-ethnography', or is it better described as some version of 'participant action research'?
3/. Have other studies trained non-sepcialist partcipants as auto-ethnographers before?
Many thanks in advance for your comments/suggestions.
I'm not an ethnographer either, but I've done a little on autoethnography. Just some initial reflections here that may or may not be useful. I think there's a potential contradiction in the collaborative element. You don't say how you will organise the collaboration, nor how many will collaborate on each data input. At what point does a data set made up of authoethnographic vignettes become a focus/discussion group? I've done collaborative (paired) autoethnography, which worked well. I've also been involved in focus group research which entailed friendship groups retailing and commenting upon each other's stories (of alcohol). We called that study a discourse analysis, since we subjected the data sets to DA (grounded theory being rather a-theoretical for our purpose). You might also call your study (which sounds novel and interesting by the way) a mixed method ethnography, using elements of auto., diary and perhaps interviews. Just some thoughts. Good luck.
Creo que puede considerarse como una investigacion cualitativa.El uso de grabaciones e incluso de un diario podrian ser herramientas importantes para que el trabajo pueda ser considerado autoetnografico.Lo importante es que los sujetos describan de la forma mas completa,exacta y rigurosa sus sensaciones,para ello habria que dar a toso los sujetos participantes ,unas referencias comunes o un patron a seguir,aunque el describir sus sensaciones es la parte mas importante.
I don't think you will be doing an auto ethnographic work. This most sound like a grounded theory methodology approach to the problem you talked about in your proposal. If you were to be an active participant in your research then you would be able to call it auto ethnography. I hope this answers your question, "Is my proposal an auto-ethnography..." I don't even know if you should call it a participant action research. for the last question you asked, yes other studies most especially in performance studies train non- actors to come participants in areas of non expertise... You may want to rethink your methodology
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