20.3 The research process

No matter what approach you use for a specific project, the research process will always be characterised by certain aspects, namely the researcher, the questions, the procedures and the answers. Another way of looking at this is to ask the questions: who? what? why? where? when? and how?

• Who will do the research? - The researcher
• What will he or she do? - The problem
• Where will he or she do it? - The place or organisation
• When will he or she do it? - The time frame
• How will he or she do it? - The methodology (the procedures
• Why will he or she do it? - The relevance and the answers

The researcher

Every researcher, no matter how well qualified and experienced is still a person with her own values, beliefs and feelings that were accumulated through years. Her family life, community life, education, and probably religion, all contributed to the forming of who she is. These values and beliefs can not be discarded when she embarks on a research project where she needs to study people with very different lives and values.

In qualitative research the researcher will know this and will not try to be "neutral" or "objective". She will rather explicitly admit her own values and seek for ways in which she can recognise when her own values intrude on her findings.

Imagine that you are conducting research on views on abortion in different religious communities. You will have your own views on this and will understand the views of people who agree with you quite easily. You will, however, have to realise that you are going to have some trouble with opposite views and will have to make a special effort to suspend your own views in order to put yourself in the shoes of the other and so come to some measure of understanding so that you can give a fair and accurate description of the others views.

The problem

The aim of a research project will usually be one of three main types:

• exploration
• description
• explanation

The positivist type of research project seeks to explain and predict, while the interpretive approach seeks to understand

Projects which are aimed at exploring will typically focus on some relatively unknown phenomenon and the approach will usually be interpretive. Qualitative methods will be usually be used (such as in–depth interviews, case studies and participant observation).

If the aim is to describe the approach can be either positivist or interpretive depending on the specific question. If the aim is a description of the prevalence of Muslim adherents in a geographical area, the methods will be statistical (and therefore quantitative) , but if the description is of the beliefs and practices of a new religious movement, the approach will be interpretive and the methods will be qualitative.

If the aim of the research is to explain , then the approach will be positivist and the methods will probably be quantitative

Within the broad aim of the project the researcher now has to formulate the specific research problem as carefully as possible and indicate if there are secondary problems in addition to the main research problem. For instance: If the main research problem is "What is the role of women in the Hare Krishna Movement?", then a secondary question might be "Do some women leave the movement because they are not satisfied with their role?"