Mixed Methods Research

In January 2002, the Houston A+ Challenge (HA+ C) received funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supplemented by the Annenberg Foundation and the Brown Foundation, to support a 5-year initiative to work with 24 large high schools in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) engaged in a student-focused, whole-school change eort.

How do people feel during extreme collective rituals? Despite longstanding speculation, few studies have attempted to quantify experiences by ritual participants. We investigated physiological arousal (heart rates) and affect during a fire-walking ritual among a Hindu community in Mauritius. We compared changes in levels of happiness and fatigue among high-ordeal participants (fire-walkers), low-ordeal participants (with familial bonds to the fire-walkers) and spectators. We found that fire-walkers were more aroused and reported greater happiness post-ritual compared to low-ordeal participants and spectators, supporting long-standing speculations about collective effervescence. However, low ordeal participants showed an increase in fatigue post-ritual. This suggests that roles and relationships between participants are important in shaping affective states in collective rituals. Perceiving apparent ritualistic suffering of related others can be more exhausting than experiencing suffering oneself.

Anthropological theories have discussed the efffects of participation in high-arousal rituals in the formation of autobiographical memory; however, precise measurements for such efffects are lacking. In this study, we examined episodic recall among participants in a highly arousing fire- walking ritual. To assess arousal, we used heart rate measurements. To assess the dynamics of episodic memories, we obtained reports immediately after the event and two months later. We evaluated memory accuracy from video footage. Immediately after the event, participants’ reports revealed limited recall, low confijidence and high accuracy. Two months later we found more inaccurate memories and higher confijidence. Whereas cognitive theories of ritual have predicted flashbulb memories for highly arousing rituals, we found that memories were strongly suppressed immediately after the event and only later evolved confijidence and detail. Physiological measurements revealed a spectacular discrepancy between actual heart rates and self-reported arousal. This dissociation between subjective reports and objective measurements of arousal is consistent with a cognitive resource depletion model. We argue that expressive suppression may provide a link between individual memories and cultural understandings of high-arousal rituals.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

Canada is home to a growing immigrant population. However, immigrant mental health declines over time following arrival in Canada. Canada's Mental Health Strategy emphasizes the importance of research that gathers information from multiple sources of knowledge to identify the mental health challenges faced by diverse immigrant populations. Mixed methods research (MMR) is well suited for this task. However, a dearth of research exists on the application of MMR to the study of immigrant mental health. A systematic review of the published MMR literature in Canadian immigrant mental health was carried out. Overall, existing MMR studies failed to incorporate correct mixed methods terminology and fully integrate the quantitative and qualitative components of the research. A checklist of important elements to include in MMR studies is offered.

"The eighteen articles of Approaching Methodology open broadly international and cross-disciplinary discussions on different aspects of methods and methodology. This volume brings many complementary perspectives on approaching and analyzing aspects of culture and cultural expression into dialogue, especially from fields of folklore studies, ethnology, philology, medieval studies, linguistics and semiotics. The introcuction will be valuable for students and young scholars who are trying to orient themselves amid the questions, challenges and potentials associated with methods and methodologies.


CONTENTS


Introduction 

Ulrika Wolf-Knuts:
The Omnipresent Method

Part I: Method in Practice

Frog (in collaboration with Pauliina Latvala)
Opening Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue: A Virtual Workshop on Methodology 

Espen Suenson:
Method and Fieldwork in a Hermeneutical Perspective 

Jill Bradley:
Building a Visual Vocabulary: The Methodology of ‘Reading’ Images in Context

Frog:
The Parallax Approach: Situating Traditions in Long-Term Perspective 

Sonja Peterson-Lewis:
The Ghost of Methodologies Past: untangling Methods, Methodologies, and Methodologists in Black Studies 
 
Part II: Constructing Data 

Francisco Martínez Ibarra:
Qualitative Research and the Study of Language Use and Attitudes

Venla Sykäri:
Dialogic Methodology and the Dialogic Space Created after an Interview

Erin Michelle Goeres:
Editing Skaldic Verse and the Problem of Prosimetra 

Dani Schrire:
Ethnographic Questionnaires: After Method, after Question 

Part III: Culturally Sensitive Reading         

Rebecca M. C. Fisher:
The Anglo-Saxon Charms: Texts in Context

Pauliina Latvala & Kirsi Laurén:
The Sensitive Interpretation of Emotions: Methodological Perspective on Studying Meanings in Oral History Texts 

Thelma Lazo-Flores:
Design Poiesis: An Inquiry on Outcomes in the Use of Method and Methodology 

Helen F. Leslie:
Younger Icelandic Manuscripts and Old Norse Studies 

Fjodor Uspenskij:
Ferocious Beast (óarga dýr) between North and East 

Part IV: Function, structure and statistics 

Emily Osborne:
Categorising Christ within an Age-öld Paradigm: The ‘kenning System’ and Shifting Cultural Referents 

Haukur Þorgeirsson:
Poetic Formulas in Late Medieval Icelandic Folk Poetry: The Case of Vambarljóð

Mathias Nordvig:
A Method for Analyzing World-Models in Scandinavian Mythology 

Vladimir Glukhov (†) & Natalia Glukhova:
A System of Techniques and Stratagems for Outlining a Traditional Ethnic Identity
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