Running head: ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW PAPER

Ethnographic Interview Paper

SW 3410
February 11th 2014
Amanda Cummings

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Ethnographic Interview Paper
In the interview with my grandmother the focus was on
spirituality and her values in relation to this life area. Before the
interview I reflected on my values and came up with a list of my five
highest priorities in relation to spirituality. In this paper the topics that
will be discussed are those values and five highest priorities, the extent
to which my identified values come from my family, and ways in which
my values are similar or different from my grandmother.
Reflecting on my values in relation to spirituality helped me
discover my five highest priorities, which were loving others, serving
others, prayer, my relationship with God, and trusting in Gods word
and his plan for my life. My main focus when it comes to spirituality is
to have a relationship with God and trust what he has in store for me,
which goes along with loving and serving the people he created. The
interview with my grandmother made me realize how much my
identified values come from my family. In the interview my
grandmother spoke about how a lot of her values were developed and
learned by her parents example and the way they lived their lives. I
came to the conclusion that I developed my values in almost the same
way because a lot of my values were similar to my grandmothers.
Overall my values are very much like my grandmothers with only
some differences. Some of her major values that were similar to mine

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were the ones that had to do with people, such as loving and serving
others. This value was something that my grandmother developed
growing up because her parents were very loving people and served
whenever they could. For example, her father once took in a homeless
person right off the street for a couple of days to feed him and help
clean him up so he could find a job. When her father did this he
explained to his children that God wants you to love every single
person on this earth no matter what and serve them in any way you
can. One of the ways that I felt my values were different from my
grandmothers was that she valued more of the religious aspect
whereas I value more of the relationship rather than following rules of
religion. She values keeping the Sabbath day holy by not working on
that day, she also believes in going to church every Sunday to hear the
message and pay the tithes and offerings and she says you should
wake up every morning and worship in song. These to me are forms of
what religion teaches and following those set of rules rather than just
having a relationship.
In conclusion, in this interview I learned a lot from my
grandmother and about my own values. Even though some of my
values are a little different, I realized how much my values are affected
by what my family values in the area of spirituality and how similar all
of our values are.

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References
Rooney, D. (2014). Ethnographic Interview Paper. Unpublished
manuscript,

Wayne State University.