- I n what way does the immediacy of place affect our psychological and
spiritual existence?
3.2 Research Design
The overall approach to the research was to use a combination of empirical
and textual research; the empirical research involved in the administration and
analysis of a questionnaire to a group of selected readers, writers and shamans,
whilst the textual research was formed through interrogation and thematic analysis
of various works of the selected authors and other published writers.
Structurally, I believed that I needed a qualitative survey involving specific
types of individuals and that the most effective approach would be to compose and
administer a common questionnaire to all of them. Such a questionnaire would
have to be unambiguous and yet reveal not only highly personal but somewhat
esoteric values on the part of the respondent. It also had to be couched in such a
way to allow the respondents to choose not to answer certain questions but yet not
feel discomfited. I t had to facilitate an elaboration on responses yet at the same
time accommodate an approach that was inclusive and acceptable to the three
distinct groups of individuals on which the research was focused: specific types of
readers; published writers (mythopoeic writers) of fictive literature and, creditable,
practicing, acknowledged shamans. I ndeed, the term ‘creditable’ needed to apply to
all respondents in the sense that they could be presumed to have well founded
reason for any contentious metaphysical theories they might hold and not risk being
dismissed as foolish.
3.3 The Research Group
The first stage involved identifying respondents to the readers’ questionnaire
and I was fortunate in being able to recruit five readers as subjects who seemed to
provide an appropriate balance in terms of gender, age (it ranged from thirty years
to mid-sixties), educational background (completion of secondary education only to
post-graduate qualifications), and socio-economic background (outer-urban,
daughter of an Anglican bishop to cosmopolitan single male). The group comprised
two female teachers of English literature, a male teacher of English literature and