Ethnographic Research (Help please!)

[stretch3172]

This is not going to be published. It is simply a "practice" project required by my program at Columbia International University.

Ah, so for us it's truly a complete waste of time. But if you actually want to learn something about atheists, I have a few suggestions. 

You shouldn't  just want to know if we have a good relationship with our families, you should also want to know if we've told our families we are atheist.  Also you should  want to know if coming out changed our relationship with our families and just how religious or not our families are. You might also want to know what the family religion is.  We have ex Muslims, Jews, Hindus , etc. here.  

Better not to assume we all have or are getting college degrees. 

Country of residence and origin is important.  This is a rather internationally flavored forum. Europe is mostly secular .  The U.S.A. not so much though it's more and less so depending on where in the country you are.  And then there are theocracies where atheism is a crime, a capital one in several places.  Not to horn in on the whole martyr thing, but it is so.  

You might ask the same questions of theists for comparison.

Mostly good ideas, except that I am asking academic-related questions because I am seeking primarily college-age atheists as a target group. You made some great points, and there are many other factors  I could consider, but since this is a fairly short project and I will not be required to address every variable, I'm not going to try.

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The purpose of this particular project is to describe the worldview of atheists and agnostics in their own words, such that any atheist or agnostic could read it for themselves and honestly say that it does their view justice.

Bold for emphasis.
Good luck with that. We’re not an organization, organized religion, cult, etc. The only thing we have in common is our lack of belief in gods. Other than that, we’re all our own little world. We’re all different and have different views on just about everything. If we coincide, it’s not because we’re atheists, though there could be correlation. Being an atheist means nothing more than the lack of belief in any gods. That’s it, dude.

Precisely. And that's precisely why I have a ton of questions. I want to learn more about those differences and discuss them in the project. Every response will obviously have some pretty sizable differences from the others.

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The purpose of this particular project is to describe the worldview of atheists and agnostics in their own words, such that any atheist or agnostic could read it for themselves and honestly say that it does their view justice.

Wikipedia says that ethnography is from the point of view of the subject.  So in other words you have to become a 18-26 year old atheist to actually complete the assignment..... checkmate   

Umm, anthropologists write ethnographies on all sorts of people groups. Are you saying I'd have to be Japanese to write one on Japanese people? Would I need to be Columbian to write one on Columbians? The researcher doesn't have to be biologically part of the group he writes about.