Qualitative Research Report
CROSS-CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON ACHIEVEMENT
ABSTRACT
This qualitative study provides an insight into the process of achievement of a
Jewish born woman. It investigates the socio-cultural concepts that created barriers
to her freedom. Leonore wanted to achieve what her father wanted his children to
obtain. However, Leonore wanted to achieve more than just one component of his
wishes. She also wanted to make both parents proud. Therefore, she achieved as
much as possible at university, as well as getting married with children. Leonore
demonstrated good coping strategies as she was aware that there were prejudices
to Jewish families This is especially being that she experienced this while living in an
area where there were not many other Jewish families. Liebkind & McAlister (1999).
INTRODUCTION
There are underpinnings that correspond to social cultural psychology. This piece of
research focuses on the qualitative approach to research methods. Hence, there is a
particular person we have interviewed to understand their life experiences. I have
decided to begin analysis from a social psychology perspective with regards to the
qualitative research interview carried out. Crisp & Hewstone (2007).
The emotional element of social cultural psychology can be considered. Usually,
emotionality can be read in most cultures. Therefore, this creates the notion of
cultural diversity in society. Between cultures, being happy, sad, surprised, etc are
known emotions.
1|Page
,These emotions are understood, within cultures and are usually defined between
people. Reading another person’s emotions can be read between a person from
African culture compared to those of Asian culture. Graham & Cohen (1997).
However, cultural differences can be found depending on the reasons why a person
would feel or express a particular emotion. For example, a person could express an
angry emotion if they were not shown acknowledgement. For example, if one person
said hello and the other person ignored it, then kept on walking. One form of culture
could mean that they do not have to say hello to another person if they did not feel
like it. A person could show a happy emotion as a response to another person’s
happy face. These seem to cross-cultural means of communication. Cultures have
their own diversity, but many channels of communication are universal. Gaertner &
Dovidio (2000).
However, within cultures, there are religious differences. For example, Islam
teachings include that a Muslim must pray up to five times per day. They could be
given a look of disgust if they were not praying as much as they should each day.
Wagner et al., (2003).
METHODS
It seems that our participant was subject to relocation. I will explain how differences
in environment can have an impact social cultural formation. This can include simple
formations, such as stress and anxiety, including forms of post-traumatic stress that
could be experienced. It was important that components of health psychology were
to be included to the formation. People needed to be healthy emotionally, mentally,
spiritually as well as physically. This would enhance the possibility of the person to
survive any challenges to their socio-cultural identity. McGregor (1993).
It seemed that the interviewee experienced various trials and tribulations due to
cultural and religious status. There was a point where the participant needed to
move as a result of conflict in the family’s beliefs. It is possible that litigation could
have been used but seems to have been overlooked. The participant seemed to
2|Page
,have to move around because her father had to. They seemed to have further issues
because of their religious believes. Aboud et al., (2003).
RESULTS
Leonore Davidoff
Summary
Leonore was born in New York City in 1932, and spent her early childhood in Brooklyn,
before moving to New Canaan, a small town in Connecticut. Her parents were Jewish
immigrants from Eastern Europe who had come to America to escape the pogroms in
the 1900s. Her father's father was a Latvian shoemaker and ritual butcher and the
family lived in an earth-floored hut behind the butchery. This grandfather emigrated to
Boston first, and Leonore's father was sent for in 1905. He travelled with his mother
and six siblings, crossing England in a sealed train from Hull to Liverpool. The
grandfather set up a tiny cobbler's shop.
Once in America the children went to school, and Leonore's father did well there,
winning prizes. Her father started working at a factory making games, and was half
adopted by a factory manager, who gave him food, and then later paid for him to go
to medical school. He rejected the grandfather's Jewish orthodoxy, which he felt his
siblings had suffered from, disliking rabbis and seeing science as the future. He went
to Harvard, where he met Leonore's mother, who was at Radcliffe, and became a
leading neurosurgeon.
Leonore's mother's parents came to America separately: her father was a carpenter
from Vilnius, and in America became a caretaker, and eventually began to buy up
property. Her mother came from a village in Belarussia, worked briefly as a maid, and
then made an arranged marriage with Leonore's grandfather. She did not work after
that.
3|Page
, On both sides the Jewish orthodoxy of earlier generations gave way to a secular
Jewish culture with a very strong emphasis on books and learning and science.
Leonore's father remained anxious of the consequences of being Jewish, and felt he
had missed medical promotions because of this. He worked very long hours,
eventually making his career at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and also working
briefly at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn. He remained seriously interested in politics.
As a child, Leonore did not find him easy to talk to.
Leonore's mother was a powerful model. She was energetic, ‘a towering presence',
who had run the Hillel Society at college and hence met her father. She subsequently
took motherhood very seriously, insisting that in 1939 they move the family home from
New York to the small rural town of New Canaan in Connecticut. She joined the Child
Study Association and its Book Committees, so she would get unpublished books,
bring them home, and she would write reviews on the basis of what the children said.
Leonore's older sister Helen, who also became a doctor and then a psychoanalyst,
and twice married a doctor, was another strong influence. She was also close to a
cousin who lived with them in wartime. Leonore's brother was also a doctor and her
younger sister, who became a museum educational director, married a psychologist,
‘so it remained a heavily scientific milieu - very heavy'. Leonore was the exception,
always thought of as the rebel, and determined not to be a doctor.
Leonore's mother had become increasingly frustrated in being defined simply as a
wife, and did eventually break out, becoming a feminist as soon as the Women's
Movement started in around 1970. She started a programme for older women, and
founded “Woman’s Place” in Connecticut. In retrospect she recognised the role of her
own teachers in this.
Her insights had jumped the dip in feminist consciousness, and some she conveyed
to Leonore. Including the belief that women be well educated. But her father was more
ambivalent about this. Leonore was strongly encouraged to read, as well as being
Prom Queen at the local school. She was also influenced by a history teacher, and a
radical teacher of social studies.
4|Page
