Week 13 - What type of researcher am I?

Through my researching journey, I discovered the way I find gathering my data most effectively is based around a qualitative research method. This is a primary characteristic which demonstrates my philosophical worldview of Social constructivism. Not only as a researcher, but as I live my daily life, I am an individual who gathers my sense of the world through experiences and understanding. I find myself consistently having the ability to look at the world through all the shades of grey. Creswell (2005) promotes this concept when he states that 'meanings are constructed by human beings as they engage with the world they are interpreting'. Creswell (2005, p.8) discusses the actions of connecting and extracting meaning within specific objects, or concepts, and enabling one's self to respect the complexity of these concepts rather than using a narrow-ended meaning to categories these notions. I reflected this through my open-ended interview style which facilitated a natural conversational method of gathering data, which liberated the subject to reflect on their own experiences and knowledge - Resulting in a deep and meaningful understanding of the specific views. In regards to my research topic based around religious and non-religious views and experiences. I have definitely based my decision on the grounds that it is a personal endeavour. This is again reflected within the work of Creswell (2005) when he acknowledges the fact that researchers of this classification are capable of recognising their backgrounds and their own perceptions, as well as how their personal experiences position them. In my case, looking at and considering my experiences around theistic and atheistic debates has definitely become the driving force in undertaking this research task. With that being said, I was able to ignore my personal bias and develop an open discussion between all the religious and non-religious world-views. We can see how effective the employment of a qualitative research method proves as a form of data collection to this subject. By honing in on the individual experience and extracting those meanings, I was able to gather my findings to offer a detailed account of this individual's perspectives allowing outsiders to look in and sympathise through a deeper level of understanding.

Reference:
Creswell, JW 2005, Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative research, (2nd ed.), Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp.5-11.

Week 12 - Findings

When conducting my interview, my eyes were open to so much about religion. I interviewed a Christian woman who was able to articulate many aspects of her beliefs and experiences based around her beliefs. When relating my findings to the literature I was able to see to what degree one's beliefs justify their actions, this is accurate in terms of religious beliefs. I was also surprised about the types of constraints that were being mentioned. This connected to my literature when I made references to the work of Caroline Merchant and her position on the mechanistic and organic worldview, they both entailed a series of justifications for actions, as well as constraints. 

I constructed my findings in 3 sections, each section was based around how the data matched my questions. What did become most obvious to me was the importance of experience. I feel that in many cases our beliefs are validated through experiences, there is always some form of prominent external driving force. Through my findings and discussion, nothing has been concrete based on pure feeling or tuition. So I think that experience is an important factor in what shapes beliefs and what we do. 

One of my research sub-questions is in regards to judgement. This concept was identified within the interview but it is not something that directly correlates to the literature review. Regardless of that, I think that is in an important factor and one of the key models which influenced me to carry out this topic for research. What I found in the interview is that this sense of judgement came from a foundation of religious constraint.

It was a long and very interesting interview. I wish I had more time to ask many more questions, but one of my favourite things that came up in the interview was how strong the sense of self this individual has build, and how much of themselves they devote to genuinely building their character and helping others without expecting anything in return.