For the rapidly expanding field of cultural psychology of health, methodological challenges are enormous. The field has expanded to include the physical, social, psychological and spiritual well-being of people, and also human strengths, resilience and happiness. In the Indian as well as other traditional societies, health and healing are considered integral to general well-being. Healing aims to restore harmony and balance within the individual through a symbiosis of the body, the mind and the spirit. All socio-cultural aspects of human life, in some way, figure within the holistic conceptualisation of wellness and well-being.

The research methodologies which are employed in psychology and other social sciences are pertinent as long as the illness model of health is the subject matter of investigation. But as we expand the domain of research to include suffering, healing, pain, freedom, happiness and so on, we face a methodological challenge of bigger magnitude. It calls for expanding the repertoire of research methods to address new questions or the old ones framed differently. These new domains of research call for research methodologies which are more holistic in nature, not in terms of fragmented variables and their measures. Second, most of the research methods employed in psychological research are appropriate for doing research on the ‘other’ person, where a dichotomy between researcher and respondent is clearly maintained. In this paradigm, the respondent is merely a data provider, and the data is processed by the researcher to draw conclusions about the ‘other’ person(s). Participatory and self-administered research obviously needs a different kind of methodological approach, and many such methodologies are still evolving in psychology. The research in which participants are actively involved in intervention, interpretation and appraisal of the outcomes, as in the case of chronic diseases, needs a different type of research methodology. Third, the scientific psychology of health can significantly benefit from Indian methodologies of yoga and meditation, developed and used to understand the human body, mind and consciousness. These self-administered methodologies can be of help, not only in dealing with physical and mental health challenges but also in self-transformation of people to a higher level of functioning.

The development of research techniques and measurability may put psychology at par with physical science

Health psychology emanated as a separate field of research from social psychology in the 1980s and focused on psychosocial aspects of health and illness (Taylor, 2006). As a sub-branch of social psychology, it employed the positivistic methods of its parent discipline. Cultural psychology of health as an independent field has a short history of the past two to three decades. For this newly emerging discipline, it is a daunting proposition in research when health practices and beliefs prevalent in different cultures are brought within the subject field of health psychology. Folk and faith healings are also brought within the subject field of health research, as are the practices of yoga and meditation. This complicates the research scenario and poses a major challenge of finding appropriate methods which can juxtapose different healing traditions. Cultural psychology of health is open to borrowing methods from different cultures and disciplines. Research methods used in cultural anthropology and sociology are widely employed to make across and within culture comparisons. Indigenous psychologies can also potentially contribute to identifying and developing new research methodologies to understand the phenomena which are considered mystical and esoteric by mainstream psychology (Watts, 1975). Smith has discussed the decolonising of research methodologies to understand health practices of indigenous societies (Smith, 2012). The challenge of finding appropriate methodologies for cultural psychology of health is leading to many innovations and breakthroughs.

It is to be mentioned here that rather than discussing methods of research, in this chapter, we are focusing on research (or scientific) methodologies. In brief, the methodology is defined as the science of methods — ontology, epistemology and rationale of a method employed in a research project. In other words, the methodology is about the rationale and principles that guide our research practices. Methodology explains and justifies the use of certain methods or tools in our specific research project. It entails philosophical assumptions that underlie any natural, social or human science project. Often such assumptions are implicit in the kind of methods we are using and rarely articulated. Simply put, methodology refers to what counts as the knowledge (McGregor & Murnane, 2010); methods are the tools, techniques and procedures followed to conduct research. Surveys, interviews, participant observation, experiments and so on are examples of methods, not of methodology which is an umbrella term for a class of methods. In this chapter, methods, per se, are not discussed, which can be found in most of the textbooks on health psychology. Our focus in this chapter is on methodologies as they are an integral part of research paradigm, or in a broader sense, part of a knowledge tradition which may vary from culture to culture. Kuhn (1970) placed positive science as a premium research paradigm which psychology borrowed from natural science. In social sciences other paradigms have evolved in recent history subscribing to different research methodologies and methods. The chapter deliberates on different methodological schemes of classifying methods of research, and on their salience for making sense of health, healing and well-being.

The research methodologies which are employed in psychology and other social sciences are pertinent as long as the illness model of health is the subject matter of investigation. But as we expand the domain of research to include suffering, healing, pain, freedom, happiness and so on, we face a methodological challenge of bigger magnitude.

Culture and knowledge traditions are closely interwoven as culture provides the context within which methods of knowing make sense. In the larger domain of health and well-being, the obtained results cannot be separated from the methodology of research. This is the reason that each of the Indian systems of healing — Ayurveda, yoga and meditation and indigenous practices — has developed its own methodology to implicate the research findings. The chapter highlights Indian methods of knowing and points at the need to innovate in the area of research methodology.

Methodologies of modern psychology

Wilhelm Wundt, the German psychologist, is remembered for establishing the first psychology laboratory at Leipzig in 1889. Psychology students are made to remember this historical place and the date by heart and are taught how experiments were conducted in his laboratory to study the structure of human consciousness. Wundt used the introspection method to take the verbal report of the experimental subject to know about their conscious reaction to stimulus conditions. In this, subjects were presented with well-defined and tightly controlled stimuli and instructed to provide — deliberate and immediate observation of inner processes (Wundt, 1888; cited in Hatfield, 2005) — the experiences that are prompted by stimuli. It was aimed to compare different subjects’ introspective reports as prompted by the same stimuli. Prior to conducting the experiments, subjects were trained to give as truthful a report as possible. In fact, subjects used to be senior members of the research team who had better articulation and skills to report their immediate experience. However, the introspection method was considered too subjective for an objective science of psychology and was completely abandoned when psychology moved to the United States. A new school of behaviourism took over, with a more rigorous experimental approach. This is also no surprise that the first department of psychology established in India at the Calcutta University was the Department of Experimental Psychology.

For almost a century, psychology was obsessed with establishing its scientific credentials. To be a science, it borrowed the experimental methods of physical sciences from physics, chemistry and biology, established laboratories and attempted to conduct experiments under controlled conditions.

The above excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Methodological Imperatives for Cultural Psychology of Health’.

Excerpted with permission from
Cultural Psychology of Health in India
By Ajit K. Dalal
Sage Publishing, India
ISBN: 978-9351509806
186pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 23rd, 2016