Conducting Culturally Sensitive Qualitative Research DEVIKADIBYACHOUDHURI THE MULTICULTURAL GUIDELINES One of the key elements of the American Psychological Association’s (APA, 2003) “Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists” is the notion of a cultural lens. The Multicultural Guidelines define culture as an embodiment of worldview, a complex of systems of values, beliefs, and resultant practices that shape the way individuals make meaning of the world. Using a visual metaphor, a cultural lens is then simply the field of vision that incorporates the landscape of culture. The Multicultural Guidelines invite psychologists to use a cultural lens, acknowledging the ways in which culture shapes their own lens, the multiple meanings that individuals may make about themselves and their contexts, and ways to be responsive and sensitive to such understandings of the world. Specifically, in terms of conducting research, Guideline 4 asks investigators to appreciate the importance of conducting culture-centered research and be sensitive to cultural issues regarding research focus, design, and methods. A cultural lens, by definition, is rooted in the subjective, the internal worldview view of a particular person from his or her particular location intheworld.Thissubjectivityofinternallyconstructedmeaning,asopposedtoapresumedexternallyobjectiverealitytrueforallpersonsin alltimesandcontexts,isthesociallyconstructedpositionofqualitative research. OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH The practice of qualitative inquiry covers a variety of research methods and approaches that operate from an interpretive paradigm, developing portrayals of a complex and dynamic reality (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). Symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969), feminist inquiry (Olesen, 1994), grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) action research, case studies, and ethnographies are examples of the plethora of approaches constituting qualitative inquiry (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Qualitative research strives to understand the epistemological nature of phenomena through the subjective experiences of the persons who are concerned with such phenomena. Essentially, it is the process of finding out what people think and feel impressionistically and narratively rather than quantifiably. As such, this methodology lends itself particularly well to understanding the experiences and worldviews of diverse persons. For instance, Gibson (2002) looked at the experience of African American grandmothers who were caregivers to grandchildren whose parents were not able to provide them with adequate care. This phenomenon of kinship care, culturally congruent in the African American community, needed a qualitative approach to explore a complex, sensitive, and contextually rich situation and capture the lived experience of this clinically significant group. Qualitative approaches are becoming increasingly popular as a methodology for con.

1. Conducting Culturally Sensitive Qualitative Research
DEVIKADIBYACHOUDHURI THE MULTICULTURAL
GUIDELINES
One of the key elements of the American Psychological
Association’s (APA, 2003) “Guidelines on Multicultural
Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational
Change for Psychologists” is the notion of a cultural lens. The
Multicultural Guidelines define culture as an embodiment of
worldview, a complex of systems of values, beliefs, and
resultant practices that shape the way individuals make meaning
of the world. Using a visual metaphor, a cultural lens is then
simply the field of vision that incorporates the landscape of
culture. The Multicultural Guidelines invite psychologists to
use a cultural lens, acknowledging the ways in which culture
shapes their own lens, the multiple meanings that individuals
may make about themselves and their contexts, and ways to be
responsive and sensitive to such understandings of the world.
Specifically, in terms of conducting research, Guideline 4 asks
investigators to appreciate the importance of conducting
culture-centered research and be sensitive to cultural issues
regarding research focus, design, and methods. A cultural lens,
by definition, is rooted in the subjective, the internal worldview
view of a particular person from his or her particular location
intheworld.Thissubjectivityofinternallyconstructedmeaning,asop
posedtoapresumedexternallyobjectiverealitytrueforallpersonsin
alltimesandcontexts,isthesociallyconstructedpositionofqualitativ
e research.
OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
The practice of qualitative inquiry covers a variety of research
methods and approaches that operate from an interpretive
paradigm, developing portrayals of a complex and dynamic
reality (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). Symbolic interactionism
(Blumer, 1969), feminist inquiry (Olesen, 1994), grounded
theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) action research, case studies,

2. and ethnographies are examples of the plethora of approaches
constituting qualitative inquiry (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992).
Qualitative research strives to understand the epistemological
nature of phenomena through the subjective experiences of the
persons who are concerned with such phenomena. Essentially, it
is the process of finding out what people think and feel
impressionistically and narratively rather than quantifiably. As
such, this methodology lends itself particularly well to
understanding the experiences and worldviews of diverse
persons. For instance, Gibson (2002) looked at the experience
of African American grandmothers who were caregivers to
grandchildren whose parents were not able to provide them with
adequate care. This phenomenon of kinship care, culturally
congruent in the African American community, needed a
qualitative approach to explore a complex, sensitive, and
contextually rich situation and capture the lived experience of
this clinically significant group. Qualitative approaches are
becoming increasingly popular as a methodology for conducting
research in psychology (Ponterotto, 2002). Unlike many of the
social sciences that have viewed humans as social beings,
psychology typically considered humans as individuated selves
in isolation (McLeod, 1996) and tended to link itself more
closely with the natural sciences. Quantitative methods
dominated the field, the gold standard of empiricism being the
randomized control-trial experiment (Walsh-Bowers, 2002).
Qualitative research methods were used primarily in clinical
case studies to generate further understanding, and such
research was usually presented in ways that implied objectivity
and authoritative expertise on the part of the researcher. Walsh-
Bowers (2002) used the qualitative approach of interviewing to
investigate the experiences of psychology researchers with
qualitative methods and found that a strong theme was the
perceived difficulty of qualitative research being accepted
within the canon of psychology, as well as the lack of adequate
training in qualitative research. Despite these obstacles, over
the past few decades, there has been an increasing realization

3. that qualitative methods might be useful in answering particular
kinds of questions (Rennie, 1996). The place of qualitative
research may well be to generate discovery of phenomena rather
than verification, because when there is little known about a
field, qualitative inquiry is useful for generating themes that
may be operationalized by later quantitative research (Heppner,
Kivlighan, & Wampold, 1992). One way of comparing these
methodologies and seeing the resultant gain is to examine two
approaches to a single topic. Bracey, Bámaca, and Umaña-
Taylor (2004) explored the relationship between self-esteem and
ethnic identity development among biracial and monoracial
adolescents through administering different measures to a large
group of adolescents. They found that biracial adolescents had
significantly lower selfesteem than Black adolescents but
significantly higher than Asian adolescents. Biracial adolescents
reported higher levels of ethnic identity than White adolescents,
though lower than Black and Asian adolescents. The authors
also found a significant positive relationship between
selfesteem and ethnic identity. In a qualitative approach to the
topic of biracial identity, Gillem, Cohn, and Throne (2001) used
a case study method following two biracial youth to describe
their identity development. Rather than deriving statistical
significance from their findings, this approach allowed the
generation of narrative examples of the complex process of
racial identity development. Although each participant
identified as Black, the paths they took were very different and
had different meanings and consequences. Embracing Blackness
for one individual meant feeling betrayed by White physical
traits and experiencing rejection from other Blacks, resulting in
his low self-esteem; for the other, it meant finally achieving
high self-esteem and a refusal to reject any part of herself,
including her positive relationship with her White parent. Both
quantitative and qualitative approaches, therefore, generate
useful information that is derived differently and can be applied
differently. Whereas the first allows for generalizability, the
second allows for deeper understanding of an issue in terms of

4. context and complexity. Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997)
described a step-by-step process of conducting consensual
qualitative research, a method of action research well-suited for
studying complex clinical phenomena in counseling. Beyond
coding therapist and client behaviors or creating scales to
determine the strength of the working alliance, qualitative
research can focus on the meanings such experiences hold for
the client and the therapist as they naturally occur, discovering
inductively what may guide the process. By focusing on the
meaning of experience, qualitative research can be helpful in
generating more ideas about what clients find helpful, useful,
non oppressive, and empowering, while taking into account the
diversity of clients and the context of their interactions with
counselors. The following set of studies demonstrates the
building of a strong foundational basis through qualitative
research. Thompson, Worthington, and
Atkinson(1994)investigated how African American women
college students responded in simulated client sessions to
African American and European American counselors who
either made a point of raising racial issues or avoided the topic.
Sessions were
videotapedandtheinteractionsqualitativelyanalyzed.Oneofthefind
ingsthatemergedwasthatthepseudo-clientsself-
disclosedmoreintimatelywhenaskeddirectlyabouttheirexperience
sasBlackwomenona
majorityWhitecampus.Extendingthatstudy,ThompsonandJenal(1
994) focusedonthepseudo-
clientsandfurtheranalyzedtheirinteractionswith theirrace-
avoidantoruniversalisticcounselors.Theyfoundthatthe pseudo-
clientswhoraisedissuesofracewerelikelytoeitherconcedeto
theircounselor’suniversalisticresponsesortodisengagefromtheirc
ounselor.Frequently,whenthepseudo-clientsweremetwithrace-
neutralizing
responsesonpresentingtheirracialissues,theywouldbecomeexaspe
rated.Inessence,theclientsneededtonegotiatetheircounselor’spost
ure

5. onrace.Continuingtobuildonthisthemefromtheperspectiveofthe
therapists,Knox,Burkard,Johnson,Suzuki,andPonterotto(2003)us
ed
consensualqualitativeresearchtolookathowAfricanAmericanandE
uropeanAmericanpsychologistsexperiencedandrespondedtoraceis
sues incross-
racialtherapydyads.Thedatafromstructuredinterviewingof
thepsychologistssuggestedthatalthoughparticipantsreportedsimil
ar
trainingexperiences,ratesofpreparatory,supervisory,andcontinuin
g
educationexperiencesthatrelatedtoraceandmulticulturalissueswer
e
muchhigherfortheAfricanAmericantherapists.Notsurprisingly,the
refore,EuropeanAmericantherapistsreportedgreaterdiscomfortab
out addressingraceincross-racialtherapydyads.
Aswellasinvestigatetherapistself-
perceptionsandexperiencesabout
addressingrace,qualitativeapproachescangiveusinformationabout
multiculturaldevelopmentandsupervision(Fukuyama,1994),infor
mus
aboutidentitydevelopmentasmulticulturalpractitioners(Constanti
ne,
1999),andilluminateprocessesofracism(Robinson&Ginter,1999).
Ponterotto(1998)commentedthatqualitativeapproacheswerealsop
articularlywell-
suitedformulticulturaltrainingresearchbecauseoftheneed forin-
depthandhighlydescriptivestudiesthatcameoutofthe
groundedtheorytradition.Whiletheory-
drivenordeductiveapproaches
flourish,thereisaneedtobalancethemwiththeory-
developingorinductiveapproaches.
CULTURAL SENSITIVITY IN CONDUCTING QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
There are two different levels of cultural sensitivity to be
accounted for in this research paradigm. On the first level is the

6. foundational understanding that all qualitative research is
informed by culture. Because all individuals, including the
researcher, are cultural beings, the impetus, focus, and methods
of the research will be shaped by the researcher’s worldview.
Given this position, it is impossible to conduct culturally
neutral qualitative research. Thus, all strategies are developed
to identify, articulate, and manage subjectivity rather than to
eliminate it. There are several important aspects of highlighting
the cultural lens and participant perspectives which will be
discussed in the following sections.
BRACKETING
The task of the researcher is to interrogate the cultural lens he
or she brings to the research, explaining it to the reader so as to
provide the reader with a direction from which to judge the
research. This reflexivity (McLeod, 1996) in qualitative
research defines the trustworthiness of the researcher. It also
allows researchers to bracket their own subjectivities to allow
participant voices and meanings to be more clearly heard.
For example, when a European Canadian woman seeks to do
research with women of color (Gerrard, 1995), it is critical to
articulate why she chose to engage in such research as well as
describe the conflicting tensions that her participants felt and
her own positions on these issues. With less soul searching, but
as much attention to detail, the authors of a study on African
American and European American therapists’ experiences of
addressing race in psychotherapy (Knox etal., 2003) described
themselves in terms of their identities, positions, and
experiences with multiculturalism. Obviously, this is very
different from the quantitative research position, where the
investigators are separate from their research and are subjects
who report but are not scrutinized in turn. In qualitative
research, the question is one of exploring and clarifying the
boundaries of subjectivity rather than seeking to banish it. On a
related note, Nevid and Sta Maria (1999) point out that it is
important when working with participants from ethnic minority
groups that have a long history of oppression to acknowledge

7. cultural mistrust. A researcher needs to both account and
prepare for the potentially mistrustful and hostile reactions and
responses she or he may encounter and strategize means of
building trust.
helpfultechniquetousetosensitizetheresearchertoculturalissues
istheuseofthebracketinginterview(Fontana&Frey,2000).Priortoen
teringthefieldtocollectdata,theresearcheristhoroughlyinterviewe
d
byacolleague.Thefocusoftheinterviewisontheresearcher’ssubjecti
vityandbackground.Oneparticularstrategytodelineatethisistoask
theresearcherquestionssimilartothosetheresearcherproposestoask
participants.Becausequalitativeresearchersoftenbringidentitiesas
wellasintrinsicexperiencesandperspectivestotheirresearch,thispr
ocessallowsthosephenomenologicalassumptionstobearticulateda
nd
thensetasidesoastosensitizetheresearchertowhatmayemergefrom
theparticipants.
SENSITIZINGRESEARCHQUESTIONS
Once the researcher has developed a coherent statement that
explains his or her cultural location, it is time to apply a
cultural lens to the research itself. Several areas are germane
here that are peculiar to qualitative inquiry. On the one hand,
qualitative research can be explicitly designed to be action
research, focused on sociopolitical and historical problems of
domination, alienation, and social struggle. For instance,
Gerrard (1991) explored the intersections of racism and sexism
in three stories of women of color experiencing counseling.
Constantine (1999) analyzed the themes arising in 17
autobiographical narratives of racism generated by counselors.
On the other hand, a research method that strives to capture the
richness and complexity of experience may also be extremely
intrusive and potentially harmful. It is necessary to tread
cautiously when the focus of research is on areas of
vulnerability, with the concurrent potential for impeding and
doing harm to clients (McLeod, 1996). There are a number of
resources available to researchers to sensitize them to the issues

8. relevant to the population of interest. For instance, Stubben
(2001) details some of the particular issues around American
Indian and Alaskan Native family values and environments that
a researcher must be sensitive to in conducting research with
such populations. Examining areas of social identity such as
race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic class, where
the researcher is treading on sensitive ground mined by the
experiences of oppression and discrimination, requires
sensitivity. As an example, if the researcher wishes to study the
experiences of Latinas, the questions designed to explore this
issue will need to be asked only after building a trusting
relationship. It will be important for the researcher to develop a
coherent explanation of who is meant by the identity label
“Latina.” Are participants approached on the basis of
selfidentification, identification based on appearance, familial
heritage, identified culture of origin, or perhaps familiarity with
Spanish? This is where work done prior to entering the field is
crucial so that the researcher is not caught completely off-guard
by complexities about which he or she is unaware. Imagine the
potential harm done by a naïve researcher, unaware of the
implications, who expresses surprise that the Latina participant
does not speak Spanish. The Latina participant needs to
understand the researcher’s interest, believe that the experience
of sharing will have ultimate positive value, and feel safe when
she chooses to disclose. The consequences of the process
undertaken by the researcher impact not only the participant’s
safety but also the quality of the data. After all, a participant
who is distrustful will either refuse to participate or will give
shallow or misleading responses. The complexity and richness
of her experience will be lost to the study.
PROTECTINGPARTICIPANTS
Beyond asking unsafe or potentially hurtful questions, ethical
issues arise because anonymity is difficult to maintain in
intimate samples where stories told are saturated with unique
markers and changing too many such markers will drastically
change the landscape of the narrative. Given the exploratory

9. nature of the inquiry, risks are harder to determine in advance.
Finally, the close contact between researcher and participant
blurs traditional boundaries that separate researcher and subject
(Grafanaki, 1996). Researchers must give careful attention to
the protection of their participants. Beyond the requirements for
the protection of human subjects, researchers must also consider
the particular threats that can arise when someone speaks out
about issues of culture or oppression. For instance, if a
researcher is exploring the organizational system of a school, is
it possible to sufficiently disguise the voices of the two African
American teachers while retaining the integrity of their
experience? If there are few people of color in the setting,
simply changing the specific ethnic group identification will not
create anonymity. Is there a possibility that members of the
setting who read the research can not only identify the
participants but also negatively target them for speaking out
about racial matters? Researchers can use several strategies to
protect their participants. Careful explanation to participants
about the risks of participation encourages participants to give
informed consent, as well as demonstrating respect for the
participant’s ability to weigh risks and choose with
deliberation. Developing multiple ways to protect anonymity,
including inviting participants to choose pseudonyms, changing
identifying details of location, and conducting interviews in
neutral sites, is also helpful. Often, presenting participants with
completed research reports allows them the option to comment,
critique, and perhaps withdraw participation if the risks are too
great. In presenting research, developing blended narratives that
exemplify the emerging themes also reduces the presence of
unique identifying markers.
TRIANGULATION
Triangulation is the combination of various methodologies in
the study of the same phenomena (Patton, 1990). Taken from
the term used in land surveying, it implies that taking bearings
in two or more directions allows one to locate oneself more
accurately at the intersection. Triangulation can take place in

10. (1) data collection, using a variety of data sources; (2)
investigators, using multiple investigators or evaluators; or (3)
theories, by applying multiple perspectives to a single problem.
As pointed out by Halbrook and Ginsberg (1997), ethnographic
transference and countertransference become significant issues
to explore in conducting qualitative research. As foundational
elements of analytic theories of psychotherapy, transference and
countertransference originally referred to the client’s
displacement of feelings and attitudes applicable to significant
figures onto the analyst and vice versa (Reber, 1995). In the
context of qualitative research, it refers to the displacement of
such feelings and attitudes between the researcher and the
participant. For instance, when a counselor begins interviewing
participants who had been clients in counseling, many may
respond to the investigator as a counselor rather than a
researcher (Choudhuri, 2003). In turn, the boundaries of how
the researcher responds to these participants may begin to blur
as to whether a response is therapeutic or investigative. It is
important that researchers explore and address these issues in
multiple ways. As mentioned earlier, bracketing is important to
articulate why the research became the focus of the researcher’s
attention so as to be able to catch and filter the prevailing
reactivities that may lead to ethnographic countertransference.
During the course of the research, investigators may use
multiple interviewers to gather data from different sorts of
interview relationships. Therefore, the ways in which
Vietnamese American participants are responding specifically to
a Vietnamese American interviewer may be highlighted by the
different content of the participant’s responses to African
American and European American interviewers. Stephenson,
Wolfe, Coughlan, and Koehn (1999) conducted two sets of
qualitative interviews with older adults, changing the gender of
the interviewer/participant pairing to have both cross-gender
and same-gender interviews to assess the differences. They
found that both the male and female participants focused on
very different topics and content based on the interviewer’s

11. gender. Having multiple interviewers allowed for this effect to
be discovered and discussed. Another method of exploring these
issues is the safety of multiple staggered interviews with the
same participant, where the researcher can explore the content
of previous interviews and remain alert to transferential
phenomena, as well as bring it up to be explored with the
participants. Sharing transcripts of interviews with participants
for them to expand on, correct, or modify is another way of
addressing these issues. The act of bringing the research
toparticipants rather than simply getting it fromthem invites
participants to become partners in the research, and often they
will address the issues of authority and identity spontaneously.
One of the advantages of qualitative research is the flexibility
and creativity that can be used. For instance, Kim, Brenner,
Liang, and Asay (2003), in their study of 1.5-generation Asian
Americans, decided to use electronic mail as a way to safeguard
their participants from shame and possible loss of face as they
described sensitive adaptation experiences. Given traditional
Asian cultural values of restraint, the investigators believed that
a face-to-face interview format would reduce forthright and
comprehensive self-disclosure. On the other hand, Hendrix
(1998), in researching college students’ perceptions of professor
credibility by race, deliberately chose to be open with her
identity as a Black woman researcher investigating student
perceptions. Rather than having White confederates assist in
interviewing White students, she chose to present to the reader
her rationale for not doing so and then explore how both Black
and White student interviewees responded to her.
SENSITIVEDATAANALYSIS
The point when the researcher leaves the field and begins
making sense of the data is sometimes referred to as “data
mining,” with a very real sense that the researcher is entering
the overwhelming, claustrophobic, and dimly illuminated code
mines (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). This is the part of the journey
where the researcher begins to make sense of the data and de
facto applies a particular cultural lens to the material. The data,

12. too, often consist of an intersubjective dialectical experience
(Crossley, 1996): the record of conversations between
researcher and participants, the record of observations by the
researcher, or memos by the researcher articulating responses,
reactions, and experiences in the fieldwork. Even texts and
historical materials that may be part of the data have been
purposefully selected. On this material, the researcher strives to
impose some order and meaning. Methods to maintain cultural
sensitivity and highlight multiple representations are necessary.
Strategies include using inductive analysis, so that codes,
categories, and themes come out of the data rather than being
imposed. Starting with indigenous concepts and typologies
(Patton, 1990), that is, verbal categories that were used by
participants rather than asked by researchers, helps this process.
For instance, if the researcher was studying children in a
diverse sixth-grade classroom, starting to code by applying
words used by the children and teachers rather than by the
theoretical literature may open more possibilities of capturing
the meaning of the diversity experience from the perspective of
the participants. Triangulation is again important in data
verification and validation. Many studies use teams of
researchers to examine the data and code separately, before
coming together to share their coding systems. In some cases,
the primary researcher will code the data and then ask an
external reader to review the codes assigned. Alternatively, a
helpful set of participants may review preliminary findings and
give feedback and critique of the data analysis. This testimonial
validity, where the interpretation is