Qualitative and Indigenous Psychology Workshop

What if you had a tool that can capture so much of the richness of the human condition? Most psychology research today is strictly quantitative which often omits large amounts of information on context, meaning-making, and processes leading to behavior. Further, many measures are often constructed ad-hoc, without attention to internal response processes, and often in contexts other than the one in which researchers want to gain understanding from, thus resulting in misleading insights. Qualitative and indigenous psychology approaches can help overcome such problems, providing a richer and deeper understanding of phenomena. This is done through the collection and analysis of non-numerical data such as interviews, open-ended data, and naturalistic behavior. Qualitative and indigenous psychology approaches are critical instruments for any psychologist.

However, qualitative approaches are commonly haphazardly done, and both practitioners and researchers often ask if “they’re doing it right”. This workshop provides a practical guide to qualitative and indigenous research with a focus on data analysis of interviews and open-ended survey data (and how to go beyond just counting themes). This workshop aims to give you a firm understanding of the principles, sampling, data analysis, data management, and theorizing about qualitative data. This workshop will feature applied exercises and will discuss common issues and practical tips in qualitative research to prepare you for undertaking qualitative research.

See workshop pamphlet for further details

- ---

About the workshop speaker: Miguel Silan is a psychological science researcher and methodologist from the Philippines. He took his M A in Social Psychology (minor in Industrial/Organizational Psychology) at the University of the Philippines Diliman and his PhD in Psychology at the Université Lumière Lyon 2. He focuses on meta methodology (when do our methods work and fail?), especially with methods for vulnerable populations. In his role as a methodologist, he has worked with various organizations on the ground to improve the lives of everyday Filipinos having worked with Save the Children Philippines, Psychosocial Support and Children’s Rights Resource Center, National Research Council of the Philippines, Ateneo Policy Center and Social and Political Psychology Laboratory UP Diliman.

Miguel Silan also serves as the Associate Director of the Psychological Science Accelerator, a globally distributed network of laboratories across more than 80 countries He focuses on engaging scholars from developing nations, and in rethinking how to do large-scale multi-country collaborations. He is also an inviting editor for the APS Observer. His current projects focus on the philosophy of psychometrics, especially across cultures. He tackles the methodological and measurement problems of fuzzy constructs in psychology.