Rapid Ethnographic Assessment

Rapid ethnographic assessment — also called the Rapid Assessment Process — is intensive, team-based qualitative inquiry that uses triangulation, iterative data analysis, and additional rounds of data collection to quickly develop a preliminary understanding of a situation from the insiders' point of view. Formalized by James Beebe, it compresses the logic of long-term ethnography into days or weeks for applied settings where decisions cannot wait for a year of fieldwork.