Association for Interdisciplinary Studies

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Interdisciplinarity, Qualitative Research, and the Complex Phenomenon: Toward an Integrative Approach to Intercultural Research
(Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2014) Ryan, Phillip; Kurtz, Jill S.; Carter, Deanne; Pester, Danielle
This article is a collaboration by the lead faculty member in a Masters program in Intercultural Studies and students who completed the program under his aegis. This article presents the program’s approach to its research course sequence, an approach involving the integration of interdisciplinary and qualitative research. The authors first provide a theoretical justification for this approach by highlighting key principles and practices of both interdisciplinary and qualitative research that act as points of integration. Then, they contextualize this approach by framing it within the graduate program’s three-course research sequence. The authors then illustrate this integrative approach with one cohort’s collaborative project on Bedouin communities in Oman, focusing on three key features of integration: the multidisciplinary literature search, the data collection process, and the integrative analysis. The authors conclude with a model for integrative intercultural research.