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

discover or make transparent organizational attributes as well as the attributes of the topicbeing researched. Becker (1998) observed medical students throughout their medicaltraining and concedes that social researchers assume that “they do notw enough aboutthe organization as a priori to identify relevant problems and hypothesis and they mustdiscover these in course of the research”. This research was not intended to discoverhypotheses about spiritual healing itself; it was intended to discover how people viewspiritual healing. Part of the discovery is the experiences of an ethnographer as the workprogresses. Consequently the data is as reliable as researching people in their naturalsurroundings and being objective as much as a participating observer can be. The aim ofthe research strategy from an ethnographic perspective is to „maximise accurateobservation and reduce distortion and bias to a minimum‟ (Taylor 2002:3). Thus, derivingmore from the data and less from the researcher‟s interpretation, I arrived at this stage afterseveral months of saturation in data and undergoing a process of arriving objectively towhat can be regarded as findings using the Nvivo coding software package.3.7 Ethical IssuesThis section explores the ethical issues from the author‟s perspective both as a researcherand as a health care professional who is bound by those professional morals and ethics thatare attributed to the medical and nursing professions. Koehn (1994:7) argues that„professional practices qualify as morally and ethically legitimate because they arestructured to merit the trust of clients‟. Obtaining approval from the Ethical Committee ofthe university was the first big hurdle. The process was long and drawn out as the proposalwent from one department to another for their approval and finally to the ethics committeeto confirm that all the relevant departments such as Health and Safety Committee, theDepartmental Head of School and the person in charge of the Public Liability insurance81