Combining insights from epidemiological and ethnographic data to investigate substance use in Truk, Federated States of Micronesia

There has been a recent concern in medical anthropology to combine quantitative epidemiological survey methods with qualitative ethnographic fieldwork methods as a means for drawing on the strengths of both approaches. This article shows the advantages of doing this by examining data on substance use and abuse from Truk, Federated States of Micronesia. Ethnographic research in 1976 based solely on qualitative methods is compared with a second study by the same investigator on the same island 9 years later that combined ethnographic fieldwork with an epidemiological general population survey of substance use by 1000 adults. The survey data were found to support many of the ethnographic conclusions, provide some new information not revealed by use of the qualitative methods and call into question a few interpretations of Trukese drinking based on qualitative data alone. This buttresses the argument that these methods are complementary, provide a cross-check on one another and yield more information when used together than either does by itself.