Friday 05 September 2025
The long gestation of this book was worth it, Leslie Francis finds
DURING early July, I interviewed a new doctoral candidate to join my research bench. The first request after acceptance was to recommend a book on research methods. I pointed him to Messy Methods in Researching Religion. This is a book on research methods but with a difference. It is not an academic discussion of (often untested) principles, but 33 first-hand accounts from engaged researchers of how they got things wrong in their own research — as well as how they got things right.
As director of the AHRC/ESRC-funded “Religion and Society” research programme (2007-15), Linda Woodhead is ideally placed to co-ordinate such a book. She was at the centre of the most extensive and exciting initiative to stimulate quality research at the interface of religion and society. She was in a good position to spot what was going wrong, and was motivated to turn mistakes into learning opportunities.
Messy Methods in Researching Religion had its roots in a 2010 conference that brought together researchers from the Religion and Society programme. A measure of the ambition in drawing together these 33 essays is the gestation period of 15 years, a frustration for some of the contributors, but an outcome worth waiting for.
The introductory chapter offers an overview of the ten most common messes in researching religion evidenced by the 33 essays. The strength of this analysis is that each mess leads into a set of corrective tips.
Mess 1: Being too informal in interviews. Attempting to make interviewees feel relaxed, researchers may lose their sharp focus. Tip: Conduct interviews with a second researcher.
Mess 2: Nervous chatter. Anxious interviewers may be too eager to jump in, either to affirm the response or to press the question. Tip: Silence may convey respect and draw people out.
Mess 3: Did they consent? Observation of participants mingling and chatting raises issues of consent. Reading a long consent form at the beginning of an interview may make a bad start. Tip: Discuss consent after rather than before an interview.
Mess 4: Keeping up appearances. Sometimes, the researcher fails to fit in, as consequence of dress and appearance. Tip: Wear the most appropriate outfit from your wardrobe.
Mess 5: Getting too involved. Long-term immersion in a community can get messy. Tip: Remember the “stranger on the train” phenomenon, in which deep conversation is protected by anonymity.
Mess 6: Failed recruitment. A brilliant research design fails without participants. Tip: Be clear about your access to participants before progressing the design.
Mess 7: Rushing into surveys: You rarely get a second chance with a survey; so you need to get it right first time. Tip: Make good use of cognitive testing, drawing on participants from the target community.
Mess 8: Falling out with your research team. Internal relations within the team are crucial to constructive outcomes. My added tip: Avoid scrabbling to put a team together to fit the prescription of a funding call.
Mess 9: Stepping on a conceptual landmine. Working in interdisciplinary territory means that your research field may be viewed differently by others. My added tip: Define the ground on which you are playing with care.
Mess 10: Losing confidence. Here is an area in which the editors could have invested greater analysis. This mess has less to do with messy researchers and more to do with messy funding systems. My added tip: Stay confident with your research question even when the funding agencies prioritise other questions.
When my newly engaged doctoral student becomes immersed in this book, he may wonder why it gives so little attention to quantitative studies in general. Just two of the 33 chapters specifically profile quantitative surveys: Michael Keenan and Sarah-Jane Page on exploring sexualities, and Nicola Madge and Peter J. Hemming on investigating the part played by religion in young people’s lives. He may wonder also why there is no reference to the contribution that the psychology of religion can make to messy methods in the field. I will need to divert his attention to other output from the Religion and Society programme which addressed such issues.
The Revd Professor Leslie J. Francis is co-director of the World Religions and Education Research Unit at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, and Canon Theologian of Liverpool Cathedral.
Messy Methods in Researching Religion
Linda Woodhead, Louisa Cadman and Nicole Graham, editors
OUP £119
(978-0-19-968789-3)
Church Times Bookshop £107.10
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