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ssss1 A continuum of research questions and methods of data collection and analysis.

Exploratory research questions are common in medical anthropology. For example, Chavez et al. (1995) studied beliefs about breast and cervical cancer in Orange County, California. They asked: “‘Do Latinas, Anglo women, and physicians have cultural models of breast and cervical cancer risk factors? If so, how similar or different are their models?’ Another way of asking this question is, ‘Do they agree on the relative importance of risk factors?’” (p. 42). Here researchers began with limited expectations about what they would find and sought to detect patterns that would help to generate theory. This approach is appropriate whenever there is insufficient existing theory or evidence to establish expectations.

Exploratory questions are also apt for centering people’s expertise about their own lives, which can challenge dominant narratives, existing theory, or researchers’ preconceptions. For example, Reese (2019) begins her ethnography of racialized food apartheid and Black self-reliance in Washington, DC, by recounting a “conversation on Mr. Johnson’s front porch.” Reese chose this starting point because of the way it and other conversations “changed what I was listening for” (p. 2). Her initial concern was the influence of the built environment, a theoretical orientation “heavily influenced by anthropology, food studies, and sociology.” But Mr. Johnson had other stories to tell, and by “listening to him more than doing much talking” (p. 1), Reese left with a new set of questions that framed the rest of the work.