Discussion on the Proposed Methodology and Preliminary Field Experienceof a Qualitative Research

The cultural discrepancy between the Western worlds and the Asians is wide (Yang, 2000). Most prominent textbooks and resources were written by Westerners and they were coming from the Western contexts. Thus, the knowledge in the textbooks might not be totally relevant in the Asian contexts. For qualitative research, real life settings are usually unpredictable and diverge from the texts. The research proposalportrayed an ideal image of the world out there. However, the preliminary experience in the field created enormous anxiety, as the ideal and the reality did not converge. Helpful resources to counter the anxiousness were the real experiences of the veteran researchers. Resources on field experience based on localized setting are minimal, especially in the South East Asian contexts. Thus, this paper aimed to discuss theproposed research methodology and the preliminary field experienceof a qualitative researcher in the context of Malaysian settings. At the juncture where the ideal and the reality deviate, reference to the experiences of veteran researchers, intuition, discussions with supervisors and peer researchers, gut feelings and respectfulness to the participants became the guide posts in the real life setting. This convergence meanwhile created new learning opportunities for the researcher.