Marlot Kuiper

91 On Ethnography ing and involves participation in this setting (Brewer, 2000; O’Reilly, 2012; Taylor, 2002; Van Maanen, 1995). In philosophy of science literature, there is an ongoing debate about whether the data collection techniques a researcher selects, are pragmatic or result from a prior commitment to a certain methodological position (see Brewer, 2000; Bryman, 2004; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003). Without going into in-depth discussions about philosophical positions, I argue that for me personally, the approach of this research directly flows from the interest of the researcher and thus the characteristic phrasing of the research question - how checklists work in situ . I adopted an ethnographic approach to study how professionals create and modify standards ‘from the inside out’. Getting an in-depth understanding of ‘what goes on’ thus became a specific aim of this study. Therefore, I indeed do feel that ethnography ‘is not just methods’, it is a specific way of defining the research problem and going about it. Or as Agar (1996, p. 2) puts it: “I don’t just mean a toolbox, I mean a way of looking at a problem.” The research interest and formulation of the research question stem from the belief that the social world is complex, and cannot be understood in terms of simple cause and effect relationships. With the specific approach of this dissertation, I answer to the many studies that aim to distil factors that affect implementation. By providing rich narratives that show how the many ‘variables’ interrelate in practice, and how structure and agency work together, this study moves beyond instrumental studies that view successful implementation as the sum of the facilitators minus the barriers (cf. Zuiderent-Jerak 2007). The overarching purpose of this study was to observe, describe and explain the professional routines, as they unfold in context (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995). As ethnography is something you do, something that develops along the way, something that is a process in itself, I call it ethnography ing. I emphasize that doing headwork, fieldwork and textwork, are not separate linear phases, but constantly evolving processes in which the researcher inevitably plays an important role (see also De Jong, Kamsteeg, & Ybema, 2013; Van Hulst et al., 2017; Tota, 2004). Naturally, I first gained access before conducting the observations, but I also started doing textwork while I was still doing field- and sensework. The coming paragraphs describe how I went about these activities. 4