Method, Teacher, Decision-Maker: Using Qualitative Research to Build a Strong Evidence Base for Atrocity Prevention in Post-Conflict Societies

Reconciliation efforts in post conflict societies are focused on strengthening both institutional reforms and interpersonal processes, each of which is seen as a way to rebuild and repair relationships following violent conflict. Atrocity prevention literature highlights relationship building in post conflict states as critical to eroding the damage of conflict and the trauma of war. Yet, relational phenomena are typically the “black box” of atrocity prevention literature, which shares little specifics about how to define, analyze, nor transform them. Qualitative research and its contextual, naturalistic designs, its rigorous set of parallel methods, and its inherent holistic and appreciative sensibility, can teach us how to better understand everyday lives and events of people living in post-atrocity states. Labels such as ‘trust’, ‘empathy’, and ‘respect’—seen as key indicators of strengthened dialogue in atrocity prevention literature—are analyzed and interpreted more efficiently through the appreciative inquiry of qualitative methods, which can inform more meaningful decision-making designed to prevent further atrocity. Using illustrations from a multi-regional research project, this paper examines how qualitative research frameworks provided the evidence base to better inform understandings of atrocity and reconciliation in post conflict societies in situ, as each state marches on the path toward a sustainable peace

Marital therapy in mainland China: a qualitative study of young adults’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs

This qualitative study explored young adults' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about marital therapy in Mainland China. Participants (N = 24) were undergraduate and graduate students attending university in Beijing and Guangzhou. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: (1) beliefs regarding marital therapy, (2) role of the therapist, (3) barriers to seeking marital therapy, and (4) greater accessibility to marital therapy. In general, our participants knew little about marital therapy and were concerned that using such services could bring shame to them or to their family and that the cost of such services would be beyond most citizens' means. In addition, participants believed that marital therapists would serve as experts doling out relationship advice, whereas clients would generally take a passive role. Increased government support, alternative forms of treatment that included phone and web-based services as a way to protect anonymity and therefore confidentiality, and government credentialing were seen as steps that could increase the use and accessibility of marital therapy in Mainland China