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A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research Program Transcript [MUSIC PLAYING] GRANT RICH: Hello, my name is Dr. Grant J. Rich. I am senior contributing faculty at Walden University and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and four of its divisions. I'm going to be speaking with you a little bit today about a chapter in a recent book I co-edited with Dr. Skultip Jill Sirikantraporn. Our book published in 2018 is called Humans Strengths and Resilience, Developmental, Cross-cultural, and International Perspectives. Our chapter called The Concept of Post-traumatic Growth in an Adult Sample from Port au Prince, Haiti, a Mixed Methods Study. And this chapter was co-authored by myself, Dr. Sirikantraporn, and Father Wismick Jean-Charles, who is a Haitian priest and Fordham psychology PhD. First, I should mention that Haiti is a very special place located in the Caribbean. And it is 95% black, 5% white or mixed race. And though French is spoken, Haitian Creole dominates. With a population of 10 or 11 million or so, it's the second most populous nation in the Caribbean. Today, Haiti is poor, economically. And this fact was made worse by the terrible earthquake of 2010, which claimed the lives of over 200,000 people. Now historically, Haiti is especially famous for its Haitian revolution that resulted in a successful revolt of enslaved Haitians, and the end of slavery there, becoming the first independent nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. I've made several trips to Haiti before beginning a research project. And its strong advised that you become familiar with the nation in which you are conducting research before you do the research. This can include, of course, background work, like screening documentaries, reading work by historians, anthropologists, psychologists, and other scholars. Attending meetings both within the nation and outside the nation on the topic. For instance, I intended several international psychology meetings, both within Haiti and the Caribbean, and the USA, before beginning this research. Also, select research partners to include local scholars, as well, to include the appropriate skill sets, such as being certain before you start that you have team members together who have the ability to conduct the needed statistical analyses, translate materials appropriately, both in terms of the language itself and the content with regard to culture, to write and disseminate and publish and present the results professionally. Father Wismick was an ideal partner, as I knew him prior to beginning the research from presenting several times at a conference he organized in Haiti. And he was highly familiar with the language and cultural issues, as well as

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research

considerations regarding local sensitivities on ethics, trauma, and research. Now Father Wismick helped us locate and recruit a sample locally in Haiti on a visit there. And he and I, while I was in Haiti, along with carefully selected local interviewers, were able to realize the sample. This required a lot of negotiation in terms of time, place, schedules, local and US permissions, and beyond. And of course, we had to make sure we had the practicalities and pragmatic issues in place. Did we have backup times and plans in case of equipment issues, such as batteries or recorders not working? Or electrical power outages? [MUSIC PLAYING] For our study, we selected a research design that was mixed method since we wanted the advantage of both quantitative and qualitative work. For instance, quantitative work allows us to examine numeric results and quantify numbers-- in numbers, the size of a result. And also to compare results cautiously with other studies and other samples and nations. However, we also feared that quantitative work alone may miss some local, cultural nuances that were not asked about directly on numeric survey measures. So we added a qualitative interview component with semi-structured interviews to allow participants to expand on answers and freely respond with additional information that they thought was relevant. So the overall design of our study is described, not surprisingly, in the methods section, where we talk about the over 110 participants from Haiti's largest city, and a small subsample that we utilized for the qualitative portion of this study. We decided on mixed methods because we wanted the best of both worlds. With the quantitative survey information, we have numeric data that we can quantify numerically. We were able to receive about 110 quantitative surveys that were completed, of which 100% reported at least three of 17 traumatic events. Over 50% said that they'd experienced 11 or more of the 17 traumatic events we asked about on our survey. For a qualitative follow up, we were able to recruit 11 persons from our 110 or so person quantitative sample. Local interviewers, who were screened and trained by the researchers and were sensitive to local language and cultural issues, conducted the tape-recorded interviews. A grounded theory approach was utilized for the qualitative portion. And themes were identified allowing some comparison to result on post-traumatic growth and other cultures and nations. And with the qualitative data, we can tap into the nuances of culture in Haiti that perhaps otherwise would have been missed by purely numeric data. [MUSIC PLAYING]

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research

So in the measures section of the chapter, you can find a list and description of the different quantitative measures we utilized in this study, for instance, the life events, checklist, the LEC, the post-traumatic growth inventory scale, the PTGI, the adult resilience measure, the ARM, meaning in life questionnaire, satisfaction with life questionnaire, and we also described the semi-structured interview guide we used for the qualitative interviews. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now, as is typical with most research articles and chapters, some of the background and context is at the beginning of the chapter in what's commonly called a literature review section. Here we label that literature review section A Brief History of Trauma in Haiti. And in that part of the chapter, you'll find some background about Haiti's rich history and context and turbulent, more recent, history in the 20th and 21st century. And much, much more, typically, can be said about the background and context for a given study. But usually there are space limitations, as was the case here. We just couldn't write books and chapters and everything else on the literature review. We needed to be succinct and careful with the amount of words. We selected carefully what we discussed. I guess I'm going to keep this brief here and welcoming to you. I hope that you enjoy the article and find it as a starting point, not an ending point. There's some excellent lessons here, I think, about conducting cross-cultural research. For instance, we definitely involved local partners, made multiple trips myself to Haiti, and involving Father Wismick allowed us to have a better sense of the local conditions and situation and ideas for sampling and data analysis and questions and topics. Now in some, our study is just the beginning. Ideally, we'd like to increase the sample size of both portions of the studies, including regions of Haiti that, for instance, may have experienced the earthquake of 2010 in a different way than those in the capital. Also, we'd like to work to include males in our qualitative interview sets, something we were not able to do, due to practical scheduling and logistics this time. Possibly we can consider adding more information about health conditions, including physical health conditions for medical records, or additional surveys if we conduct more research in the future with a new sample, possibly comparing and contrasting rates of such conditions and types of amounts of trauma, exposure, and post-traumatic growth. As you begin critically analyzing research, take time to read through this research article first for basic understanding. Go back and re-read for clarity.

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research

And then finally read through a third time to highlight those areas that will be important for your critical analysis, making notes in the margins as you go along. These steps will undoubtedly move you on a path of developing good critical thinking skills. And research takes time, but most importantly, analyzing the research is time well spent in understanding the human experience. [MUSIC PLAYING]

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research Additional Content Attribution MUSIC: SC_Light&Bright06_T32 and/or SC_Business01_T41 Credit: Studio Cutz FOOTAGE: WAL_PSYC6701_Grant Rich (Photo image of Grant Rich) Credit: Grant Rich GettyLicense_478379144 (Group) Credit: Caiafilm/Caiafilm/Getty Images Still: 5009585672_d536340969_o (Rubble) Credit: Kendra Helmer GettyLicense_481913486.mov (Guy on Plane) Credit: danr13 / Creatas Video+/Getty Images Plus / Getty Images GettyLicense_473099689_h1(Haitian Woman with Child in Lap) Credit: MickyWiswedel / Vetta / Getty Images GettyLicense_157565994 (Tents) Credit: Claudiad / E+ / Getty Images GettyLicense_499379610 (Trauma) Credit: Credit: KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images WAL_PSYC6701_HumanStrengths-BookCover Credit: Rowman and Littlefield. (2017). Human Strengths and Resilience: Developmental, Cross-Cultural, and International Perspectives Book Cover [Photograph].

A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research