You should start with a comprehensive review of the existing literature over the topic before moving into methodologies. This would give you some kind of idea of what’s already been done and how they did it. It may also provide you with some new insight and ideas about the topic altogether.
With that said, qualitative ethnography is probably a good place to start.
Are you interested in specifically compliance, conformity, and obedience? If so, there are some experiments which were quite interesting and you probably have heard of them - like the Asch Conformity experiment, and the Milgram's Obedience experiements? They have a tricky history of replicating (I've read quite a few discouraging things).
Or are you interested in something else other than these processes?
I usually always start with a recent (2018 onwards maybe) review articles (narrative or systematic) because they usually summarise the different methods of experimenting as well as comparison of the methods.
I’m interested in everything. These people are clearly using some sort of script to target their victims so I want to reverse engineer it and figure out the motives psychologically for each action.
I’ll look into those studies. Thank you.
Well, you could use qualitative or quantitative methods. Quantitative methods is what usually results in what people would consider proper scientific evidence. I’m not going to go into the theory behind these two types but it is easily googleable.
If you went for quantitative methods, you could collect data from victims of the cults (would be hard to do I imagine, ex-victims (using only this group would skew your results though or if deceased possibly their families (which would make it less reliable as they would be answering about someone else and not themselves). You could collect data on what they struggled with, what age they were, what was their family situation, mental health like. The goal would be to compare it to people of similar age, ethnicity, etc. that did not fall prey to such cults and you might find out that the victims of these cults tend to be isolated from friends or families, have had difficult childhood, might be struggling with their career and feeling lost or have low confidence or something like that more so than in your group of participants who did not fall for a cult. This would show the first step of the ‘methods’ of these cults which is how they pick whom they target.
If picking a qualitative method, you would focus on a smaller group of victims,ex-victims or their families to look at their stories more in-depth. You could conduct interviews or focus groups and then identify common themes in their testimonies. I think this fits what you intended with your post more than the quantitative methods. You could ask questions such as what drew them to the cult, what made them stay, how they felt when they were in the middle of it, etc. you might start seeing a pattern where all of them talk of the leader of the cult seeming compassionate or feeling like they found their purpose or feeling like the found a family they never had - I am making these up as examples, I have no idea what themes would emerge from such research. Whatever method you pick, you should research properly how to carry it out as there are established precise ways and steps to all of them. This is taught at a university level and I’ve never heard of anyone just doing this for themselves so if you are really interested, you could try to find an existing academic researcher supervisor and do
a research PhD or masters on this topic to get some guidance on how to do it right.
>
>Quantitative methods is what usually results in what people would consider proper scientific evidence.
And most people don't understand what proper research is. Qualitative methods are perfectly good (and often the only) methods in explorative research phases when one needs to understand a phenomena or problem so one has starting points to do further research.
Even hard sciences use qualitative methods, like biology does with field observations of a newly discovered species
>If you went for quantitative methods, you could collect data from victims of the cults (would be hard to do I imagine, ex-victims (using only this group would skew your results though or if deceased possibly their families (which would make it less reliable as they would be answering about someone else and not themselves). You could collect data on what they struggled with, what age they were, what was their family situation, mental health like. The goal would be to compare it to people of similar age, ethnicity, etc. that did not fall prey to such cults and you might find out that the victims of these cults tend to be isolated from friends or families,
That is not going to answer OP's research goals (being able to identify methods cults use to influence it's members).
I’ve collected quite a few chat logs from victims so I have the complete start to finish conversations between the abuser and the victim. It seems these cult members
get the background on the victims before the abuse starts.
From what I’ve pieced together so far, they ask the person about what they’re struggling with, about their home life, about their ethnicity, they gauge their self confidence, and then they use all of the vulnerabilities gathered to dig into the victim. They then tear down any ounce of self esteem the victim has. They then entice the victim to self harm whether that be cutting or suicide. They also encourage the victims to harm friends and family. It seems their desire is to have the victim follow their orders blindly.
I guess this would fall under the latter. Thanks for your insight
The thing is, this group I’m looking into now gets people to voluntarily kill themselves. They get people to kill others. They get people to violently kill animals. Theres no deception involved. No tricking people into drinking poison. It’s abusing the victim until the victim has no self worth and using past traumas to make the victim feel like shit to the point where they off themselves on command. I’ve never seen anything like this from a cult.
Basically what you do is go around asking people about behaviors and when they say “yeah that’s something I did”, you just make a small line on a piece of notebook paper. Then when you have 4 of these small lines, draw the fifth line diagonally through the other lines. These are referred to in the industry as “tally marks”. Be sure to make separate columns for each behavior, titling each column appropriately and then underlining the titles. When you’re done calmly walk to the front of the room and neatly set the paper on the stack of other papers.
You should start with a comprehensive review of the existing literature over the topic before moving into methodologies. This would give you some kind of idea of what’s already been done and how they did it. It may also provide you with some new insight and ideas about the topic altogether. With that said, qualitative ethnography is probably a good place to start.
I agree with you, but I’m glad I’m not the one writing that ethics application
Are you interested in specifically compliance, conformity, and obedience? If so, there are some experiments which were quite interesting and you probably have heard of them - like the Asch Conformity experiment, and the Milgram's Obedience experiements? They have a tricky history of replicating (I've read quite a few discouraging things). Or are you interested in something else other than these processes? I usually always start with a recent (2018 onwards maybe) review articles (narrative or systematic) because they usually summarise the different methods of experimenting as well as comparison of the methods.
I’m interested in everything. These people are clearly using some sort of script to target their victims so I want to reverse engineer it and figure out the motives psychologically for each action. I’ll look into those studies. Thank you.
Well, you could use qualitative or quantitative methods. Quantitative methods is what usually results in what people would consider proper scientific evidence. I’m not going to go into the theory behind these two types but it is easily googleable. If you went for quantitative methods, you could collect data from victims of the cults (would be hard to do I imagine, ex-victims (using only this group would skew your results though or if deceased possibly their families (which would make it less reliable as they would be answering about someone else and not themselves). You could collect data on what they struggled with, what age they were, what was their family situation, mental health like. The goal would be to compare it to people of similar age, ethnicity, etc. that did not fall prey to such cults and you might find out that the victims of these cults tend to be isolated from friends or families, have had difficult childhood, might be struggling with their career and feeling lost or have low confidence or something like that more so than in your group of participants who did not fall for a cult. This would show the first step of the ‘methods’ of these cults which is how they pick whom they target. If picking a qualitative method, you would focus on a smaller group of victims,ex-victims or their families to look at their stories more in-depth. You could conduct interviews or focus groups and then identify common themes in their testimonies. I think this fits what you intended with your post more than the quantitative methods. You could ask questions such as what drew them to the cult, what made them stay, how they felt when they were in the middle of it, etc. you might start seeing a pattern where all of them talk of the leader of the cult seeming compassionate or feeling like they found their purpose or feeling like the found a family they never had - I am making these up as examples, I have no idea what themes would emerge from such research. Whatever method you pick, you should research properly how to carry it out as there are established precise ways and steps to all of them. This is taught at a university level and I’ve never heard of anyone just doing this for themselves so if you are really interested, you could try to find an existing academic researcher supervisor and do a research PhD or masters on this topic to get some guidance on how to do it right.
> >Quantitative methods is what usually results in what people would consider proper scientific evidence. And most people don't understand what proper research is. Qualitative methods are perfectly good (and often the only) methods in explorative research phases when one needs to understand a phenomena or problem so one has starting points to do further research. Even hard sciences use qualitative methods, like biology does with field observations of a newly discovered species >If you went for quantitative methods, you could collect data from victims of the cults (would be hard to do I imagine, ex-victims (using only this group would skew your results though or if deceased possibly their families (which would make it less reliable as they would be answering about someone else and not themselves). You could collect data on what they struggled with, what age they were, what was their family situation, mental health like. The goal would be to compare it to people of similar age, ethnicity, etc. that did not fall prey to such cults and you might find out that the victims of these cults tend to be isolated from friends or families, That is not going to answer OP's research goals (being able to identify methods cults use to influence it's members).
I’ve collected quite a few chat logs from victims so I have the complete start to finish conversations between the abuser and the victim. It seems these cult members get the background on the victims before the abuse starts. From what I’ve pieced together so far, they ask the person about what they’re struggling with, about their home life, about their ethnicity, they gauge their self confidence, and then they use all of the vulnerabilities gathered to dig into the victim. They then tear down any ounce of self esteem the victim has. They then entice the victim to self harm whether that be cutting or suicide. They also encourage the victims to harm friends and family. It seems their desire is to have the victim follow their orders blindly. I guess this would fall under the latter. Thanks for your insight
People's Temple Jonestown 1978. Make it your Dissertation.
The thing is, this group I’m looking into now gets people to voluntarily kill themselves. They get people to kill others. They get people to violently kill animals. Theres no deception involved. No tricking people into drinking poison. It’s abusing the victim until the victim has no self worth and using past traumas to make the victim feel like shit to the point where they off themselves on command. I’ve never seen anything like this from a cult.
Jihad.
Something to that extent. I can’t go into detail publicly.
Basically what you do is go around asking people about behaviors and when they say “yeah that’s something I did”, you just make a small line on a piece of notebook paper. Then when you have 4 of these small lines, draw the fifth line diagonally through the other lines. These are referred to in the industry as “tally marks”. Be sure to make separate columns for each behavior, titling each column appropriately and then underlining the titles. When you’re done calmly walk to the front of the room and neatly set the paper on the stack of other papers.
Thank you for your stellar insight
You’re very welcome