An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

Chapter 3 describes the methodology, how the research used an ethnographic approachbased on Brewer (2000), which includes participant and non- participant observation, andsemi-structured interviews to collect qualitative data with the aim of using triangulation inthe analysis of the data. Two churches were chosen as research sites and their Ministerswere approached with the proposal and asked for permission to conduct fieldwork. Afterstarting the observations the researcher then requested that she should personally addressthe church attendees at the Pentecostal church as there had been no expression of interestin the study topic that was made directly to the researcher.Following the announcement at the URC church meeting, the researcher received severaloffers of interest in the study topic. The church meeting was an open meeting that could beattended by anyone who attended the church, although only church members were allowedto vote on topics that required a vote. The Pentecostal church has a more closed committeeof all church members.The interviews were audio taped and then transcribed. The respondents had the option towithdraw from the study at any time during the volunteering, interview and post interviewphase. They signed a consent form and were asked to read the transcript, ask for a copy ofthe audiotape and make comments on the contents of the transcript when they signed theconsent form, and again when the transcribing process was completed. None of therespondents took the opportunity to request the audiotapes or to read the transcript.On examining models of data analysis such as discourse analysis (Brewer 2000, Miles andHuberman 1994) and McCracn‟s (1988) model, the latter was chosen after my learningto use the NVivo coding framework and linking this with the different stages of analysisthat were required for this ethnographic study.15