Researching Diverse Populations

Recently my colleagues and I published an article examining the leisure of women with disabilities (Henderson, Bedini, Hecht, & Schuler, 1995). In a published comment about the article several months later, Smears (1996) stated: If the interpretive paradigm is the basis of the research then the links between how epistemology informs methodology in qualitative research might be explored. For example, the qualitative methods applied give little indication of the relationships between the researcher and the researched. Just as there are issues about whether men can adequately interview women...there are questions around the significance of non-disabled researchers (however empathetic) interviewing disabled women (p. 80). The point made by Smears was well taken, but I was perplexed by questions about how research ought to be done if the researcher was, or was not, a member of the studied group. In almost all areas of the social sciences, including leisure research, the 1990s has heralded an awareness of diversity in our society. An acknowledgment of these diverse populations, however, has not compensated for the lack of research. Because few studies have targeted specific diverse groups, the current instruments may not accurately assess the leisure behaviors of some individuals. I discovered, however, that a number of researchers have begun to do research on diverse groups (e.g., Carr & Williams, 1993; Floyd, Shinew, McGuire, & Noe, 1994; Henderson, Winn, & Roberts, 1996; MacKay, 1996; Roberts & Drogin, 1993; Silverberg, Backman, & Backman, 1996; as well as many others who have studied people with disabilities) and are seeking strategies for how to do it best (e.g., Allison, 1988; Hutchinson, 1988; Jacobson, Yaffe, & Sheldon, 1995). As I tried to better understand the arguments about whether or not a researcher ought to be a member of the group researched, I came upon other issues about researching diverse populations that were relevant. Diverse populations are defined as people in the non-dominant social system who have been traditionally underresearched and underserved. Examples of groups might include women, people of color, people with disabilities, low income people, gays and lesbians, older adults, people for whom English is not their first language, high risk youth, and others. Not all these groups have a uniqueness that makes gathering data different from dominant groups in society, but leisure researchers might do a better job of including these groups and designing research strategies if potential differences and uniquenesses are considered. The definition of diverse is somewhat problematic. For example, we have inadequate constructs of race and ethnicity (Hutchinson, 1988). Further, such groups as white women might be a part of the dominant social system as might older men even though they also represent aspects of the non-dominant system. In addition, even among diverse or traditionally defined minority groups, a great deal of diversity exists making generalizations within groups, let alone across groups, difficult. Nevertheless, I use the term diverse populations in this paper to describe groups in our society that have often been considered out of the mainstream or "special" because of the uniqueness of their social, cultural, and historical experiences. My own interest in the subject of researching diverse populations has been emerging for a number of years as I've addressed the invisibility of women in research on leisure behavior. For example, by going beyond the concept of biological sex as the only defining characteristic between men and women, most feminist researchers acknowledge the need to illuminate the possible differences and historical-cultural specificity among women. Just as feminists have been critical of the patriarchy for not acknowledging the contributions of women, we can also be critical of how women studying women sometimes have ignored diversity issues (hooks,1989). …