Research Design and Blog Set-up

This overall project has been broken down into three phases. This paper and blog represent the first phase. The focus of this first-phase research is to explore the potential existence of innate universal conflict resolution abilities in humans. Through a comprehensive review of Western literature, coupled with a structured survey of selected cross-cultural peacemakers, a preliminary conclusion has been developed that shows that further, more extensive research would be valuable and should be considered. That further research and implementation of more extensive interviews/surveys makes up the phase two and three work. The methodology and approach used for this first phase is sufficient given the relevance of the information that has been explored. The collected information provides a foundation to move toward more comprehensive research.

The following list describes in some detail the three proposed research phases:

Phase 1: Explore the research question via a literature review; build research study design; preliminary survey on a very limited scale; synthesize information and report as “Woodbury Institute Capstone” paper.

Phase 2: Re-evaluate the survey design; implement comprehensive survey/interviews; extend literature review and synthesize with collected data; produce complete paper.

Phase 3: Develop a world-wide research strategy; build funding; conduct a broad, multi-cultural literature review; design a multi-cultural research study; implement study; report in paper; build potential next steps.

I feel it is important to combine the learning and ideas gathered from today’s literature with the actual experiences of as many peacemakers as possible. The survey that makes up a large portion of this research was constructed to be taken by Western mediators. The reason for this architecture was the ideal fit this group’s experience represents for the scope of this project. A detailed summary of the survey for Phase 1 can be found later in this paper and will be revealed later in this blog following a voyage into the current literature.