A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research © 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 1 A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research Program Transcript [MUSIC PLAYING] GRANT RICH: Hello, my name is Dr. Grant J. Rich. I am senior contributing faculty at Walden University and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and four of its divisions. I'm going to be speaking with you a little bit today about a chapter in a recent book I co-edited with Dr. Skultip Jill Sirikantraporn. Our book published in 2018 is called Humans Strengths and Resilience, Developmental, Cross-cultural, and International Perspectives. Our chapter called The Concept of Post-traumatic Growth in an Adult Sample from Port au Prince, Haiti, a Mixed Methods Study. And this chapter was co-authored by myself, Dr. Sirikantraporn, and Father Wismick Jean-Charles, who is a Haitian priest and Fordham psychology PhD. First, I should mention that Haiti is a very special place located in the Caribbean. And it is 95% black, 5% white or mixed race. And though French is spoken, Haitian Creole dominates. With a population of 10 or 11 million or so, it's the second most populous nation in the Caribbean. Today, Haiti is poor, economically. And this fact was made worse by the terrible earthquake of 2010, which claimed the lives of over 200,000 people. Now historically, Haiti is especially famous for its Haitian revolution that resulted in a successful revolt of enslaved Haitians, and the end of slavery there, becoming the first independent nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. I've made several trips to Haiti before beginning a research project. And its strong advised that you become familiar with the nation in which you are conducting research before you do the research. This can include, of course, background work, like screening documentaries, reading work by historians, anthropologists, psychologists, and other scholars. Attending meetings both within the nation and outside the nation on the topic. For instance, I intended several international psychology meetings, both within Haiti and the Caribbean, and the USA, before beginning this research. Also, select research partners to include local scholars, as well, to include the appropriate skill sets, such as being certain before you start that you have team members together who have the ability to conduct the needed statistical analyses, translate materials appropriately, both in terms of the language itself and the content with regard to culture, to write and disseminate and publish and present the results professionally. Father Wismick was an ideal partner, as I knew him prior to beginning the research from presenting several times at a conference he organized in Haiti. And he was highly familiar with the language and cultural issues, as well as A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research © 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 2 considerations regarding local sens.

1. A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
© 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 1
A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GRANT RICH: Hello, my name is Dr. Grant J. Rich. I am senior
contributing
faculty at Walden University and a fellow of the American
Psychological
Association and four of its divisions. I'm going to be speaking
with you a little bit
today about a chapter in a recent book I co-edited with Dr.
Skultip Jill
Sirikantraporn. Our book published in 2018 is called Humans
Strengths and
Resilience, Developmental, Cross-cultural, and International
Perspectives. Our
chapter called The Concept of Post-traumatic Growth in an
Adult Sample from
Port au Prince, Haiti, a Mixed Methods Study.
And this chapter was co-authored by myself, Dr. Sirikantraporn,
and Father
Wismick Jean-Charles, who is a Haitian priest and Fordham
psychology PhD.
First, I should mention that Haiti is a very special place located
in the Caribbean.

2. And it is 95% black, 5% white or mixed race. And though
French is spoken,
Haitian Creole dominates. With a population of 10 or 11 million
or so, it's the
second most populous nation in the Caribbean.
Today, Haiti is poor, economically. And this fact was made
worse by the terrible
earthquake of 2010, which claimed the lives of over 200,000
people. Now
historically, Haiti is especially famous for its Haitian revolution
that resulted in a
successful revolt of enslaved Haitians, and the end of slavery
there, becoming
the first independent nation in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
I've made several trips to Haiti before beginning a research
project. And its
strong advised that you become familiar with the nation in
which you are
conducting research before you do the research. This can
include, of course,
background work, like screening documentaries, reading work
by historians,
anthropologists, psychologists, and other scholars. Attending
meetings both
within the nation and outside the nation on the topic.
For instance, I intended several international psychology
meetings, both within
Haiti and the Caribbean, and the USA, before beginning this
research. Also,
select research partners to include local scholars, as well, to
include the
appropriate skill sets, such as being certain before you start that

3. you have team
members together who have the ability to conduct the needed
statistical
analyses, translate materials appropriately, both in terms of the
language itself
and the content with regard to culture, to write and disseminate
and publish and
present the results professionally.
Father Wismick was an ideal partner, as I knew him prior to
beginning the
research from presenting several times at a conference he
organized in Haiti.
And he was highly familiar with the language and cultural
issues, as well as
A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
© 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 2
considerations regarding local sensitivities on ethics, trauma,
and research. Now
Father Wismick helped us locate and recruit a sample locally in
Haiti on a visit
there. And he and I, while I was in Haiti, along with carefully
selected local
interviewers, were able to realize the sample.
This required a lot of negotiation in terms of time, place,
schedules, local and US
permissions, and beyond. And of course, we had to make sure
we had the
practicalities and pragmatic issues in place. Did we have backup

4. times and plans
in case of equipment issues, such as batteries or recorders not
working? Or
electrical power outages?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For our study, we selected a research design that was mixed
method since we
wanted the advantage of both quantitative and qualitative work.
For instance,
quantitative work allows us to examine numeric results and
quantify numbers-- in
numbers, the size of a result. And also to compare results
cautiously with other
studies and other samples and nations. However, we also feared
that
quantitative work alone may miss some local, cultural nuances
that were not
asked about directly on numeric survey measures.
So we added a qualitative interview component with semi-
structured interviews to
allow participants to expand on answers and freely respond with
additional
information that they thought was relevant. So the overall
design of our study is
described, not surprisingly, in the methods section, where we
talk about the over
110 participants from Haiti's largest city, and a small subsample
that we utilized
for the qualitative portion of this study. We decided on mixed
methods because
we wanted the best of both worlds.
With the quantitative survey information, we have numeric data

5. that we can
quantify numerically. We were able to receive about 110
quantitative surveys that
were completed, of which 100% reported at least three of 17
traumatic events.
Over 50% said that they'd experienced 11 or more of the 17
traumatic events we
asked about on our survey.
For a qualitative follow up, we were able to recruit 11 persons
from our 110 or so
person quantitative sample. Local interviewers, who were
screened and trained
by the researchers and were sensitive to local language and
cultural issues,
conducted the tape-recorded interviews. A grounded theory
approach was
utilized for the qualitative portion. And themes were identified
allowing some
comparison to result on post-traumatic growth and other
cultures and nations.
And with the qualitative data, we can tap into the nuances of
culture in Haiti that
perhaps otherwise would have been missed by purely numeric
data.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
© 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 3

6. So in the measures section of the chapter, you can find a list
and description of
the different quantitative measures we utilized in this study, for
instance, the life
events, checklist, the LEC, the post-traumatic growth inventory
scale, the PTGI,
the adult resilience measure, the ARM, meaning in life
questionnaire, satisfaction
with life questionnaire, and we also described the semi-
structured interview guide
we used for the qualitative interviews.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now, as is typical with most research articles and chapters,
some of the
background and context is at the beginning of the chapter in
what's commonly
called a literature review section. Here we label that literature
review section A
Brief History of Trauma in Haiti. And in that part of the
chapter, you'll find some
background about Haiti's rich history and context and turbulent,
more recent,
history in the 20th and 21st century. And much, much more,
typically, can be said
about the background and context for a given study.
But usually there are space limitations, as was the case here. We
just couldn't
write books and chapters and everything else on the literature
review. We
needed to be succinct and careful with the amount of words. We
selected
carefully what we discussed. I guess I'm going to keep this brief

7. here and
welcoming to you. I hope that you enjoy the article and find it
as a starting point,
not an ending point.
There's some excellent lessons here, I think, about conducting
cross-cultural
research. For instance, we definitely involved local partners,
made multiple trips
myself to Haiti, and involving Father Wismick allowed us to
have a better sense
of the local conditions and situation and ideas for sampling and
data analysis and
questions and topics.
Now in some, our study is just the beginning. Ideally, we'd like
to increase the
sample size of both portions of the studies, including regions of
Haiti that, for
instance, may have experienced the earthquake of 2010 in a
different way than
those in the capital. Also, we'd like to work to include males in
our qualitative
interview sets, something we were not able to do, due to
practical scheduling and
logistics this time.
Possibly we can consider adding more information about health
conditions,
including physical health conditions for medical records, or
additional surveys if
we conduct more research in the future with a new sample,
possibly comparing
and contrasting rates of such conditions and types of amounts of
trauma,
exposure, and post-traumatic growth. As you begin critically

8. analyzing research,
take time to read through this research article first for basic
understanding. Go
back and re-read for clarity.
A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
© 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 4
And then finally read through a third time to highlight those
areas that will be
important for your critical analysis, making notes in the margins
as you go along.
These steps will undoubtedly move you on a path of developing
good critical
thinking skills. And research takes time, but most importantly,
analyzing the
research is time well spent in understanding the human
experience.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
A Critical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Research
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9. WAL_PSYC6701_Grant Rich (Photo image of Grant Rich)
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[Photograph].
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© 2018 Laureate Education, Inc 5