Running head: FINAL PAPER

Final Paper
Ramesh Neupane
Southern Illinois University- Carbondale
EAHE 587: Qualitative Research
Due Date: June 26, 2015

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Introduction:
There are more than 2,000 international students at Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondale (SIUC). Most of the international students want to make new friends and get along
with the new environment (American Culture). At the beginning of their college life, they have
many problems, such as financial difficulties, different cultural norms, and a new educational
system. They also lose their familiar symbols and traces. Out of those 2,000 students, some of
them go to church to make new friends and learn about the new cultures and get involved. I am
really surprised to see the people of Vine Church welcoming me, even though they do not know
me. I did not see them welcoming like that to other local people and students. They were just
welcoming and giving extra comfort to the International Students. So, this study is followed by
this question, "What motivates people of Vine Church to help and get to know people who come
from different cultures and backgrounds, especially international students?" This research
question will help me to uncover the motivation of the people of the Vine Church in supporting
the international students.
Tradition Used:
To know the motivation of the people at Vine Church to help and welcome the
international students, we cannot find it out by counting or by any numerical figures. We have to
know those people and be around their culture to understand what it means to be Christian and
see the life from their perspective. So, qualitative method will be used to find out what motivates
people of Vine Church to help and support the people from the different background and
cultures, especially international students. I will use the post positivism paradigm to complete
this research because it represents more of a philosophy and intellectual movement, rather than a
research method or theory (Lichtman, 2013). Post-positivism suggests that the social world is

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patterned, and that causal relationships can be discovered and tested via reliable strategies. The
post-positivism research is broad rather than specialized, and post positivism belief in single
reality. However, getting to the results is difficult. Similarly, to find out the motivational factor
that motivates people of Vine Church to help the international students, I need to know about the
culture of the Vine Church and for that, I have to do the ethnographic approach. No specific
guideposts are needed to do the research on Vine Church. Rather, I have to focus on an
understanding of the culture (Lichtman, 2013). I am using the ethnographic approach because
Vine Church is a natural setting, and my research is based on finding the culture of Vine Church
that motivates people to help and support international students.
Methods Used
I will use two different kinds of methods to collect the data, observations and interviews.
During my observations, I will maintain the rigor and trustworthiness of the church people
throughout the time. During my first observation, I did not have any idea about what I was going
to do, and my first observation was prompt and unstructured in everything. However, during my
second observation, it was structured, and I knew what I was looking for. I have set my mind
about what I am looking for, I have prepared my interview questions, and I have changed some
questions after my second observation. Additionally, I got some feedback from my classmate to
change some interview questions because there were some closed questions. I will follow up
with my classmate again, ask for some feedback on the questions, and make sure everything is
correct.
For the interview, I will do a mock interview with one of my friends who goes to another
church, which will provide me a wide knowledge about if I am going to get the correct
information or not. I have set a guided set of observations to find out the culture of the Vine

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Church, which will help me find out what motivates the people of Vine Church to help the
people from different backgrounds and cultures. In the guided set of observations, the main focus
is in finding the culture of the Vine Church, as well as the intentions of the people who attend the
church. What do the people of the Vine Church do for their living, and what motivates them to be
at Vine Church and try to help and support people? These observations will help in the interview
method.
Ethical Challenges and Trustworthiness
Every research should have trust-worthiness in it. Research should include transparency
of the process, and results that matter (Lichtman, 2013). I will make sure the credibility of this
research is correct by doing a member checks, and by encouraging my participants to be honest
during the interview. For the dependability, I will have a clear description of my study and also
ask my colleagues to make sure all the data are correct. I will document in detail during my
observation and interview. There will be presence of transferability too, which will have a very
detailed description to compare my conception about the Vine Church culture. And also, I will do
the peer review of my whole research. By these methods, I will have the trust-worthiness on my
research paper.
During the study, I will take the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval before I do
any interview. I will make sure my study is not doing any harm to anybody. I will also make sure
all the interviews will be confidential. I might face a situation of rapport and friendship because I
might get close to the people of Vine Church, where I have to fake the friendship to know the
culture of the people of Vine Church. Researchers should make sure that they provide an
environment that is trustworthy. At the same time, they need to be sensitive to the power that
they hold over participants (Lichtman, 2013). I will be cautious about this situation during my

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research. I will have informed consent to be signed by everyone who will give an interview to
make sure that they understand what I am doing and are willing to participate in the study. I will
also get advice from my committee, as well as the IRB, in regards to the questions that I will be
asking.
Data Analysis
I will collect all the data and will code the data from it. If there are more than 30 coding,
then I will use the axial coding to reduce the numbers of code and reduce it to 15 to 20 coding
and come to a theme. I will use a conversation analysis to do my data analysis. Conversation
analysis is a detailed analysis of the talk between two or more individuals (Lichtman, 2013). I
will interview more than two people and their opinions about the Vine Church culture. I will get
the detailed information on what they say about the culture of Vine Church. After the theme is
created, then I will make sure my theme is related with my research question. I will make sure I
am interpreting the all the data correctly. I will not change the wordings of people in my study.
Instead, I will write the same context of what they mean to say it. I will check who my audience
will be too and who the participants are.
Conclusion/Summary
This study is done in qualitative analysis under the post positivism paradigm. This study
is focused on finding the motivation of people of Vine Church in helping and supporting the
people from different backgrounds, especially international students. In this study, I will be doing
observations and interviews to collect the data. Axial coding will be used to code the data. This
study will use the conversation analysis techniques to do the data analysis. Finally, this study will

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see the participants, and write the voices of the participants, rather than my perspective about
Vine Church.
.
Reference
Lichtman, M. (2013). Qualitative research in education, 3rd edition. SAGE Publications, Inc.:
Thousand Oaks, CA. ISBN-13: 978-1412995320