Use of Emancipatory Research Methods to Better Serve Culturally and Socially Marginalised Individuals, Families, and Communities

In this course, Dr Cirecie West-Olatunji, Ph.D., Xavier University of Louisiana, shows how positivist, quantitative research and evaluation methods have had hegemony, but how increasing awareness of the disservice they do to marginalised populations has seen a swing away from them toward qualitative methods which seek both to discover and to take action toward social justice. Dr West-Olatunji defines these methodologies: general qualitative, mixed, critical (including critical race, feminist, and indigenous), and emancipatory. She focuses on how culture-centred research validates culturally diverse ways of being and aims to empower and liberate participants who have been marginalised by positivist traditions of research. Highlighting the importance to the profession of using a transcultural theory as a basis for research, Dr West-Olatunji explains how truth-telling, bias minimising, and an increase in transparency obtain for studies in which researchers accept the basic premise that researcher self-disclosure and collaboration with the researched in a culturally competent way can achieve greater validity and social justice. Investigative “do’s and don’ts” are included.