CHAPTER THREE
Methodology and Procedures
A
s MENTIONED IN PRECEDING CHAPTERS, the goals of this volume are to understand what traditional healers do, discover what takes place between healers and their clients, recreate the practices, indepth and unshared knowledge, and behaviors of seven Yoruba Traditional Healers (YTHs) in their interactions with clients, and subsequently generate hypotheses regarding these interpersonal techniques. In furtherance of these aims, I observed, interacted with, videotaped and interviewed profiled healers during individual healing and group divining sessions with their clients, generated data from the information collected through the above methods, and derived hypotheses from these multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 1994). Utilizing an exploratory case study approach allowed me to obtain firsthand information concerning YTHs' behavioral patterns, functions, roles and interactional relationships. In support of this enterprise, Ary, Jacobs and Razaviech (1979) asserted that the case study method provides an opportunity for researchers to heighten their insight into basic aspects of human behavior. Merriam (1988) also declared that "a qualitative case study is an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a bounded phenomenon such as a program, an institution, a person, a process or a social unit" (p. xii). The discussion of the methods and procedures employed in this volume is subsumed under the following headings: setting and the language used for the research; support for the research; population and sample; description of the research subjects, the research entourage; the research instrument; descriptions of the procedures for data collection; interview schedule; observing, interviewing and videotaping Yorubi healers; journal and record keeping; validity and reliability; data collection; approach to gathering and collecting the data; and summary. Copyright 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.