Spradley should be read by anyone who wants to gain a true understanding of the process of participant observation. This text is a follow-up to his ethnographic research handbook, The Ethnographic Interview, and guides readers through the technique of participant observation to research ethnography and culture. Spradley shows how to analyze collected data and to write an ethnography. The appendices include research questions and writing tasks.

James P. Spradley (1933–1982), a professor of anthropology at Macalester College, wrote or edited twenty books on ethnography and qualitative research in twelve years, including The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society (with McCurdy; 2/E with Shandy), The Ethnographic Interview, Participant Observation, The Cocktail Waitress: Woman’s Work in a Man’s World (with Mann), and You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads, all available from Waveland Press. He was among the first cultural anthropologists to study modern U.S. life and to apply distinctly anthropological concepts and methods to address real-world problems like occupational stress, deafness, and homelessness.