Religious Affiliation and the Use of Sacred Texts in Social Research Interviews

Description

Although religion and society have many areas of overlap, many cultural studies seem to avoid the focus on religious affiliations and self-identification of research participants. Ignoring the rich layers of research participants’ religious backgrounds, when they are approached for a social study, may deprive social research from important insights into participants’ lives, interests and values.

This presentation foregrounds the religious self-identification of research participants in two main practical ways: a) in recruiting research participants along the lines of their religious self-identification, and b) in using sacred texts they subscribe to as tools to enhance the research interviews. The presentation reports on a qualitative study that utilised short excerpts from the Bible and from the Quran to prompt and sustain research one-to-one interviews with 28 participants (15 Christians and 13 Muslims) from different nationalities.

The study analysed the quality of data collected from such sacred-texts-based interviews, the empowerment of participants, and the nature of the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. The discussion revolves around the benefits of adding the religious self-identification to the research participants’ recruitment process. It also focuses on the findings of the study which show that using sacred texts was perceived favourably by the participants, enhanced the dynamics of the interviews and provided a platform to produce data that are rich, varied and nuanced. Using sacred texts with participants who subscribe to them added an element of ownership, as participants were able to voice their opinions using texts they hold dear. Foregrounding participants’ religious affiliation contextualises the research interviews in settings that are perceived by the participants to be genuine, allowing them to express some of their values that may otherwise remain unspoken.

Period	8 Sept 2018
Event title	Unspoken, Unseen, Unheard Of – Unexplored Realities in Qualitative Research
Event type	Conference
Location	St. Gallen, SwitzerlandShow on map