MY RESEARCH PROCESS - IN “DIVINITY – THE CONCEPT “

GOOD DAY TO YOU !!

TODAY I WAS GRAPPLING ……….. WITH MY RESEARCH PROCESS IN “DIVINITY – THE CONCEPT “

TRUST IN EMERGENCE: IT’S MORE PRACTICAL - MY RESEARCH PROCESS

Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.

Traveler, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.

This poem from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado captures the spirit of my research process and the practical theories that emerged from that process. Initially I set out, on what I thought was a well-traveled path, to find empirical evidence of what I knew to be true. I soon realized that conducting research centering on what matters to research participants—practical theory research—means there is no path and, certainly, there is no way of knowing what you will find.

My Research Process is best captured in this Spanish Poem -

First Sudhanshu the poet – the first love of myself and then the academic Sudhanshu – The Researcher …………. !!!!!!!

Caminante no hay Camino

Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino y nada más;

Caminante, no hay camino,

se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace el camino,

y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca

se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante no hay camino

sino estelas en la mar.

Wayfarer, there is no path

Wayfarer, the only way

Is your footprints and no other.

Wayfarer, there is no way.

Make your way by going farther.

By going farther, make your way

Till looking back at where you've wandered,

You look back on that path you may

Not set foot on from now onward.

Wayfarer, there is no way;

Only wake-trails on the waters.

Antonio Machado’s poem “Caminante no hay Camino” (“Wayfarer, there is no way”) is one of my favorite poems because it explores human destiny by using a metaphor of a road: we walk the road and thus walk life, observing the world, making choices. The Spanish poet notes that the “Caminante”—or Wayfarer or Wanderer—already leaves footprints from his past: “Is your footprints and no other.” He explains that the footprints represent his distinct past and no one else’s. The poet then examines how the “Caminante” makes his own decisions and, thus, his own path: “Wayfarer, there is no way. Make your way by going farther.” “Caminante” has to keep walking to create his destiny and the new road he walks. The last part of the poem urges the “Caminante” to not look back but forward, to keep walking the path that he has created for himself. “Wayfarer, there is no way; only wake-trails on the waters.” The last two lines of the poem shows that the “Caminante” has no path because it all disappears with the ocean and its bubbles.

This poem is part of a collection known as Proverbios y Cantares, or Proverbs and Songs. In this collection, Machado focuses on destiny and on many topics that at the time, the late 1800s to early 1900s, in Spain were very controversial. He focused on elements such as nature, time, dreams, and the individual and his identity. Spain was then still pursuing a realist idealism and culture that made Machado famous for thinking outside of the poetic box. This is one of his most recognized poems because of the message that it transmitted at the time and still transmitted to this day.

What I like about this poem is that it depicts life through symbolism. Machado looks at one’s decisions and how they shape one’s future self. My favorite line in the poem is one of the most known verses in the Spanish poetic culture: “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” I like the verse because it reminds us that we decide our own fate. The poem teaches me that we truly are in charge of the path that we take, that we have our past to reflect on and our future to forward to and make the best of.

This poem from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado captures the spirit of my research process and the theories that emerged from that process. Initially I set out, on what I thought was a well-traveled path, to find empirical evidence of what I knew to be true. I soon realized that conducting research centering on what matters to research participants—practical theory research—means there is no path and, certainly, there is no way of knowing what you will find.

The most difficult challenges of becoming a practical theory researcher are:

1.Acknowledging that it is virtually impossible to understand practical theory methodology prior to using it.

2.Developing the courage to let the research participants define the research problem, and

3.Letting go of your own interests and preconceived ideas to “trust in emergence.”

Ironically (or maybe not), these are also the challenges of Daring Greatly and living a courageous life. Below is an overview of my research process. Before we jump in, I want to acknowledge Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss for their pioneering work in qualitative research and for developing grounded theory methodology – I learnt my research methodology from their works. All of these authors and researchers - literally changed the way I see the world.

THE RESEARCH JOURNEY

I rate myself as a moderate researcher. The power of statistics and the clean lines of quantitative research appealed to me, but I fell in love with the richness and depth of qualitative research. Storytelling is my DNA or rather my forte, and I couldn’t resist the idea of research as story-catching. Stories are data with a soul and no methodology honors that more than grounded theory of these researchers and my Practical Research theory . The mandate of practical/grounded theory is to develop theories based on people’s lived experiences rather than proving or disproving existing theories.

Behavioral researcher Fred Kerlinger defines theory as “a set of interrelated constructs or concepts, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of phenomena specifying relations among variables, with the purpose of explaining and predicting the phenomena.” In practical theory we don’t start with a problem or a hypothesis or a literature review, we start with a topic. We let the participants define the problem or their main concern about the topic, we develop a theory, and then we see how and where it fits in the literature.

I didn’t sign on to study DIVINITY —one of the most (if not the most) complex and multifaceted aspect of life - Divinity as we experience. A topic that not only took me 15 years to understand, but an emotion and a concept that is so powerful that the mere mention of the word Divinity - triggers discomfort and avoidance in people. I innocently started with an interest in learning more about the anatomy of connection with people on this subject.

After fifteen years of my work in Divinity being in education sector , I was sure of one thing: Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection. I learned that we resolve this concern by understanding our vulnerabilities and cultivating empathy, courage, and compassion—what I call emotional resilience.

After developing a theory on emotional resilience, and getting clear about the effect of it on our lives, I wanted to dig deeper—I wanted to know more. The problem is that there’s only so much you can understand about Divinity by asking about it from people. I needed another approach to get under the experiences. That’s when I had the idea to borrow a few principles from chemistry of my school days as I remember. In chemistry, I think I remember that it is in thermodynamics, if you have an element or property that is too volatile to measure, you often have to rely on indirect measurement. You measure the property by combining and reducing related, less volatile compounds until those relationships and manipulations reveal a measurement of your original property. My idea was to learn more about Divinity by exploring what exists in it’s absence.

I know how people experience and move through Divinity but what are people feeling, doing, and thinking.

How are some people living right alongside us in this culture of faith in Divinity and still holding on to the belief that they are enough? I knew these people existed because I had interviewed them and used some of the incidents from their data to inform my work Divinity and emotional resilience.

Before I dove back into the data, I named this study “THE DIVINITY RESEARCHED.” I was looking for women and men living and loving with their whole hearts In Divinity. I wanted to know what they had in common. What were their main concerns, and what were the patterns and themes that defined their Wholeheartedness in Divinity ? I reported the findings in my study which I plan to publish.

Vulnerability and emotional resilience - has consistently emerged as a core category in my work on Divinity. It was a critical component in both my study on Divinity and my study on Wholeheartedness, and there’s even a chapter on it. I understood the relationships between vulnerability and the other emotions that I’ve studied, but after years of dropping deeper and deeper into this work, I wanted to know more about vulnerability and how it worked. The practical or the grounded theory or rather a research process that emerged from this investigation became the medium of my subject study of Divinity,

DESIGN

As I studied, grounded theory methodology, as originally developed by Glaser and Strauss and refined by Glaser – I reformed my plan of research on Divinity. The practical theory process consists of five basic components: theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, coding, theoretical memoing, and sorting. These five components were integrated by the constant-comparison method of data analysis. The goal of the research was to understand the participants’ “main concerns” related to experiencing the topic being examined - Divinity. As the main concerns emerged from the data, I developed a theory that explains how the participants continually resolve their concerns in their daily lives and I started weaving a STORY OF DIVINITY FROM THE DATA DESIGN .

SAMPLE

Practical theoretical sampling, the process of data collection that allows for the generation of theory, was the primary sampling method that I used in this study. When using theoretical sampling, the researcher has to simultaneously collect, codes, and analyze data and use this ongoing process to determine what data to collect next and where to find them. In line with practical theoretical sampling, I selected participants based on the analysis and coding interviews and secondary data.

I interviewed 750 female participants, approximately 43 percent of whom identified themselves as Hindus, 30 percent Muslims, 18 percent as Christians , and 9 percent as others. The female participants’ ages ranged from eighteen to eighty-eight years, with a mean of forty-one. I interviewed 530 men, approximately 40 percent of whom identified themselves as Hindus, 25 percent as Muslims , 20 percent as Cristians, and 15 percent identified as others.. The mean age of the men interviewed was forty-six (the range was eighteen to eighty).

A basic tenet of grounded theory is “all is data.” Glaser writes, “The briefest comment to the lengthiest interview, written words in magazines, books and newspapers, documents, observations, biases of self and others, spurious variables, or whatever else may come the researcher’s way in his substantive area of research is data for grounded theory.”

In addition to the 1,280 participant interviews, I analyzed field notes that I had taken on sensitizing literature, conversations with content experts, and field notes from my meetings with graduate students who conducted participant interviews and assisted with the literature analysis. Additionally, I recorded and coded field notes on the experience of taking approximately 400 master and doctoral social-worker students of Jawahar Lal Nehru University and Delhi University with whom I interacted on Divinity, emotional resilience etc.

I also coded over 3,500 pieces of secondary data. These include articles, studies and case notes, letters, and journal pages. In total, I coded approximately 5,000 incidents (phrases and sentences from the original field notes) using the constant comparative method (line-by-line analysis). I got all of this coding manually done, as software is not recommended in Glaserian-grounded theory.

I collected all of the data with the exception of 215 participant interviews that were conducted by graduate social-work students working under my direction. In order to ensure inter-rater reliability, I trained all student research assistants and I coded and analyzed all of their field notes.

Approximately half of the interviews were individual meetings and the other half happened in groups of twos, threes and more groups. Interview times ranged from thirty minutes to three hours, with an average of approximately sixty minutes. Adjusted conversational interviewing was utilized because it is regarded as the most effective grounded theory approach to interviewing.

CODING

Constant comparative method was used by me to analyze the data line by line, and then I also designed memos to capture the emergent concepts and their relationships. The primary focus of the analysis was to identify the participants’ main concerns and the emergence of few core variables. As I conducted additional interviews, I reconceptualized categories and identified the properties that informed and reinforced each category. I used selective coding when core concepts emerged and the data were saturated across categories and across their properties.

Grounded theory researchers I believe are required to conceptualize from the data. This approach is very different from traditional qualitative methods that yield findings based on thick description of data and participant quotes. To conceptualize Divinity, Wholeheartedness, and vulnerability, and to identify the participants’ main concerns about these topics, I analysed data response by response while asking the following questions: What are the participants describing? What do they care about? What are they worried about? What are the participants trying to do? What explains the different behaviors, thoughts, and actions? Again, I used the constant comparative method to reexamine the data against the emerging categories and their related properties.

I CALL IT LITERATURE ANALYSIS AND NOT LITERATURE REVIEW -

In my practical theory the research allows the problem to emerge from the data, a full review of the significant literature is conducted after the theory is generated from the data, unlike the conventional research. The literature reviews done in quantitative research and traditional qualitative research serve as buttresses on both sides of research findings—literature reviews are conducted to support the need for new research, the research is conducted, findings emerge independent of the literature, and the research is again supported by the literature to demonstrate its contribution to the researcher’s profession.

IN PRACTICAL THEORY RESEARCH - LITERATURE IS PART OF THE DATA. I LEARNED VERY QUICKLY THAT GROUNDED-THEORY RESEARCHERS CANNOT GO INTO THE LITERATURE REVIEW THINKING, THE THEORY HAS EMERGED, I’M DONE, HOW DOES IT FIT? INSTEAD, THE GROUNDED THEORIST MUST UNDERSTAND THAT THE LITERATURE REVIEW IS ACTUALLY A LITERATURE ANALYSIS AND IT IS NOT SEPARATE FROM THE RESEARCH BUT IS A CONTINUATION OF THE PROCESS.

I CALL IT LITERATURE ANALYSIS AND NOT LITERATURE REVIEW

As an example, I look at the various concepts I studied in this research and I ask, “Do these concepts fit the data? Are they relevant? Do they work the data?” The answer is yes, I believe they accurately reflect what emerged from the data. Like emotional resilience theory, my quantitative colleagues will test my theories on Wholeheartedness and vulnerability and we will push the knowledge development process forward.

As I look back on my research process , I realize the deep truth in the poem I shared at the beginning of this writeup. There really is no path. Because the research participants had the courage to share their stories, experiences, and wisdom, I forged a path that defined my research in Divinity. When I first realized and resented the importance of embracing vulnerability and living a Wholehearted life, I would tell people that I was hijacked by my own data. Now, I know that I was positioned and put in right perspective by my research process. I was not hijacked but rather rescued and put in correct perspective.

I WAS RESCUED, POSITIONED AND PUT IN CORRECT PERSPECTIVE BY MY OWN RESEARCH …………….. !!!!!

TRUST IN EMERGENCE: IT’S MORE PRACTICAL - MY RESEARCH PROCESS

TRAVELER, THERE IS NO PATH, THE PATH MUST BE FORGED AS YOU WALK !!!!

MUCH LOVE –

Sudhanshu