Constructing the Mediumship Activity Questionnaire (MAQ)

In designing the MAQ, two considerations were paramount. Firstly, the main aim was to obtain valid and informative answers that would increase our knowledge about the process and nature of mediumship. Therefore, open-ended questions were used in the MAQ with the intention of encouraging mediums to be original in their answers and openly express

in mediumship. Open-ended questions allow for greater depth or novelty of responses while still valuing quantitative attributes of representativeness and pattern across respondents. Furthermore, the use of open-ended questions is considered best for exploratory questioning (Salant & Dillman, 1994). In addition, the layout was made clear and well-structured so that mediums found the MAQ easy to complete (F. J. Fowler, 1995). Secondly, as it was not expected that the open-ended responses would guarantee the richness of response that would be necessary to allow for a more formal qualitative analysis, responses to the MAQ were intended to inform a later stage of research involving in-depth interviews with mediums. In this respect, open-ended questions were considered most appropriate as they could identify a range of answers that could be offered as topics to explore in more detail later in the research process. Therefore, as seen in Chapter five, responses to the MAQ also contributed to the design of an interview schedule and placed the researcher in a more informed position to make empathic insights, increasing rapport during the interview study.

A number of activities were influential in the choice of specific questions to include in the MAQ. In Chapter one the planning phase of the research was discussed, which included a reflective account of participation in and observation of a week-long residential training course held at the Arthur Findlay College entitled "Mediumship, Spirit Awareness and Developing Your Potential". I also observed demonstrations of mediumship and attended a monthly mediumship awareness group for a year at my local spiritualist church. These activities were similar to ethnographic research "fieldwork" (Brewer, 2000) and were an opportunity to stimulate thinking and elicit ideas for the survey, providing inspiration for questions to ask on the MAQ, and increasing awareness of the language used by mediums. Furthermore, the importance of a conceptual or planning phase, when designing research studies, has been discussed, as it helps the researcher to define the "problem" and devise relevant research questions (Creswell, 1998).

The MAQ consists of a combination of fourteen open and closed items (see Appendix 3.2) which were separated into sections on life history and background, the process and nature

of mediumship, and the content of mediumship readings or demonstrations. The purpose of these questions was to provide a number of narrower focus questions within the broader overarching research question: How do mediums understand and explain their mediumship experiences? Examples of questions in the life history section are: "How did you first discover you had the ability to be a medium?" and "Please describe any childhood experiences, events or family influences you think may have contributed to the development of your mediumship ability". Examples of questions enquiring about the process and nature of mediumship include: "Are there any procedures, rituals or mental actions you follow in order to receive spirit communications?" and "Do you have a spirit control or guide(s)? If you do, please describe their role in your mediumship. For example, how you discovered them, what is their purpose, how and when they communicate, what are they called?" It was anticipated that this structure would encourage participants to reflect on the biography of their mediumship, with sections broadly representing a linear story of how they became involved in mediumship, how mediumship "works", and what its purpose is.

As will be seen in the course of the chapter, the questions centred around five main areas of interest which are reflected in the way responses were subsequently categorised and analysed: 1) to determine how mediums perceive their abilities to have been discovered and developed, 2) to establish whether mediums feel in control of preparation to receive spirit communication or whether communication "just happens", 3) to gauge the extent to which mediums perceive their communication with spirit to be internally or externally manifested, 4) to gather more information on the nature of spirit guides, and 5) to gather more information on what is communicated and what mediums consider to be the most important aspects regarding the purpose of mediumship.

As discussed in the next section, content analysis was chosen as an ideal technique to apply to the text gained from the open-ended responses to the MAQ as it allows for both qualitative and quantitative approaches to be combined (Cavanagh, 1997). Section 4.2 focuses on a methodological discussion of the content analysis approach adopted in this study and describes how existing theory and research helped to determine a coding

scheme and operationalised a category system. Frequencies will be reported in the remaining sections alongside original quotations, which emphasises the flexible nature of the content analysis approach as original qualitative responses help to both reflect the essence of the content analysis categories and allow for new themes to develop.

4.2 Content analysis approach

Content analysis is a tool to provide knowledge, new insights, and a representation of "facts" (Weber, 1990). By reducing textual material into fewer content-related categories the data becomes more manageable and the researcher is able to identify themes and patterns in the data in order to describe and quantify the phenomena under investigation (Carney, 1972). Content analysis is defined succinctly by Krippendorf (1980, p. 21) as "a research technique for making replicative and valid inferences from data to their context." According to Weber (1990, p. 10) content analysis has many uses and advantages over other approaches. Firstly, content analytic procedures operate directly on text or transcripts of human communication; secondly, content analysis methods combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches, which are commonly viewed as antithetical; and thirdly, content analysis is relatively unobtrusive.

This second point is extremely useful for the purpose of this research. A major advantage of content analysis over an exclusively quantitative or qualitative method is that it allows for a synthesis of methods. The content analysis approach will allow for the quantification of initially qualitative data (open-ended responses of the MAQ) and will also permit exploration of the qualitative data for additional themes and patterns. Not only can one tally the occurrence of content by establishing frequencies (such as how many mediums report having a spirit guide), but one can also explore the content of the data, immerse oneself in the narrative, explore its deeper meaning, and report original quotations from mediums. In this respect, content analysis goes beyond counting words or describing the data, by allowing both the testing of theories and hypotheses, and also the emergence of new insights (Cavanagh, 1997; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Thus knowledge gained from a

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content analysis approach will be founded on em pirical evidence and be based on m edium s' unique perspectives.

In sum m ary, the content an alysis approach has certain advantages for the purpose of this research over other research m ethods. It retains the representativeness, replicability and generalisability of qu antitative approaches, such as su rveys and experim ental m odes of inquiry, but can also provide direct inform ation, insights and perspectives from participants that are em phasized in form al qu alitative m ethods, such as, them atic analysis, grounded theory and phenom enology. C ontent an alysis should not, how ever, be confused with these m ethods, for although they share a sim ila r analytical approach they go a step further in their an alysis to develop theory or a nuanced understanding of the "lived experience" (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Phenom enological approaches are considered in more detail in C hapter seven involving in-depth interview s w ith a selection of m edium s.