Choosing Methods

Abstract

Researchers who enter into the social settings of another culture come from many different disciplines, most often using methods related to their questions and methods that have proved useful in their discipline. Yet, in cross-cultural research, when one starts with a negotiated question that acknowledges local needs, there is the added challenge of finding methods that are comfortable, effective, and productive in that culture. This chapter will look at issues common to all disciplines as researchers seek methods in research that cross cultural borders.

You shouldn’t have a method and then go find data to match your method. You shouldn’t have a theory and then go find your method and data to match your theory, and then forget, oh, by the way, there’s a question over there. I favor methods appropriate to the circumstances, situation, and research question. To do otherwise is like thinking that every time your kid gets a briar or a thorn in his finger, you’re going to take out a butcher knife. I’m known as an ethnographer, but I’m using multiple methods all the time to try to get different angles on the questions I’m asking.

(Shirley Brice Heath, linguistic anthropologist, Stanford University)