The insider/outsider dilemma: field experience of a white researcher "getting in" a poor black community

Abstract

"Getting in," the process of gaining, building, and maintaining trust with the group under study, is difficult for any researcher. Differences of ethnicity, age, and class between the researcher, who is considered an Outsider, and the Insiders, members of the group being studied, pose special problems. A 3-year nursing ethnography of a senior citizen center in a poor, inner-city black ghetto is used to analyze the Insider/Outsider dilemma; to highlight the five phases of getting in (impressing, behaving, swapping, belonging, and chillin' out); and to provide strategies to help researchers studying groups different from themselves.