In Liberia, West Africa, the Civil War had grave consequences on Liberians, with more than 2 million of its citizens forced to leave their homes and countless people murdered, raped, and abducted (Mohamed, S., & Thomas, M. (2017). According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Africans were disproportionately affected by the conflict-related displacement (UNHCR, 2017). However, much research has been done in the past elaborating on the health conditions and trauma of the refugees.

This paper proportionately studies several aspects of North Carolina's Liberian refugees and their experiences with pastoral counselors. It focuses on the intervention and counseling administered by pastoral counselors for the Liberian Refugees living in southeastern mid-sized Cities. Qualitative research will be conducted with ten former refugees now residing in SouthEastern mid-sized City who underwent counseling sessions with pastoral counselors over several weeks.  

Around mid-2015, the number of refugees globally peaked in over 20 years to about 15.1 million, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR, n.d.a).  The resettlement of refugees in the United States has been in existence, according to the History of Resettlement in America (2016), for approximately 100 years, yet it has not received public attention extensively. In the past ten years (Radford & Phillip, 2016) state, about 3,342 plus refugees migrated and had thus resettled in North Carolina.

Individuals who were victims of war have been of increased concern for researchers as well as practitioners worldwide. Zong and Batalova (2015) stated it is estimated that less than 1% of people legally recognized as displaced people or refugees are currently resettled abroad in receiving countries. Whereas "Resettlement" is the careful selection of vulnerable refugees by governments for purposes of lawful admission; defined by UNHCR (2017). Throughout their journey, refugees undergo a multiplicity of traumatic experiences, including family tension, rape, illness, torture, unsafe conditions, and death threats (Green, et al., 2013). However, Wright, et al. (2017) stressed that those who are most likely to experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are survivors of torture.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2006b), also known as the U.N. Refugee Agency, Africans are affected by conflict associated with disarticulation astronomically. However, to date, most research on mental health is health-related and based on more traumas (Gadeberg et al., 2017). Refugee experiences in faith-based reactions to traumatic experiences are vital to research to further the knowledge base in the impacts of worldwide ethnic conflicts on humankind (El-Khani et al., 2017).

Pastoral counseling is an integral part of pastoral psychology for it provides specialized and personal treatment to those seeking help and is considered a resourceful means of therapy (Schuhmann, & van der Geugten, 2017). Pastoral professionals are now aiding in a highly educated and professional form. Pastoral counselors can range from religious figures to practicing psychotherapists.

Traditions, beliefs, and customs play a major role in a culture that often leads to psychological norms and managing stress (Smith, Fischer, Vignoles, & Bond, 2013). Research also shows that even in pre-colonial Africa, societies had their health care systems, which also accounted for mental health disturbances. In this current, overlooked, trauma-focused discourse of refugees, support healing and adaptation in traditional meaning systems and resources has been profusely neglected (Ryle & Kerr, 2020).

The problem to be addressed by this study is that refugees undergo a triple-flight period in their search for a country that can accommodate them (Acquaye, 2016). In these flight periods, it is evident that these people encounter different situations that endanger their lives (Adedoyin et al., 2016). Due to the traumatic nature of the consequences they encounter, they must have access to proper counseling to revert to their healthy lifestyles (the Andes, & Worker, 2019).

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive phenomenological study is to look into the experiences of Liberian Refugees with pastoral counseling while resettling in a Southeastern mid-sized city. From the literature, it is evident that Liberian refugees go through many challenges as they try to find a peaceful country where they can resettle (Teye & Yebleh (2015).

There is a large Liberian population living in America, which first grew slowly but suddenly rise in the number of refugees after the civil war.

The war that lasted for almost eight years, from 1989-1997, sent the wave of immigrants to America (Omata, N. 2013). Liberian refugees have now been living in America for many years, but many of them still struggle in their everyday lives facing lots of challenges regularly. Refugees worldwide undergo a lot of mental and physical trauma due to their experiences; they are generally war impacted individuals who are forced to move to another country seeking better living conditions.

Overview

This paper discusses chapter 3, which will provide details on the study’s qualitative methodology and phenomenological design, highlighting the justification of these methods to ensure appropriateness. The second section is the population, and the sample will be examined and justified as well as recruitment procedures for the sample selection. Additionally, the chapter provides information about the materials used in the study, procedures of the study, and details of how data will be collected, organized, and analyzed. Assumptions, limitations, or delimitations of the study will be stated, and ethical concerns will be addressed. The chapter will conclude with a summary.

Research Methodology and Phenomenological Design

The two preliminary inquiries that arise with the procedural and theoretical inquiries can be approximately stated as efforts by writers to reply to the inquiries: how do we comprehend relocations, and how do we research voyages? Though carefully unified since one inquiry clues to the other, it is conceivable to confine the procedural and theoretical matters through endeavoring to handle them autonomously. Though fixed with procedural inquiries rather than stress on approaches, this section launches with the proof of numerous notions vital to this method (Braithwaite & Moore, 2017). It bids a profound critique of the study terms as an orthodox tactic to investigate migratory wonders, chiefly the theoretical context on which it is established, typically that of marginalist finances whose prospects the study finds to be flawed.

This submission also contests the support of procedural distinctiveness on which the tactic rests. The study calls for a more organizational, historical, and universal procedure. The study completes that we absorb nothing from the orthodox methodology (Hammarberg et al., 2016). For this study, the factual dispute with concerns to the learning of contemporary migrations is not amid the experimental and the non-concrete investigative method. Still, it touches on the very features of the noteworthy realities: the incentives alone or the organization's rules.

This procedural course defines the examination of the specificity of contemporary immigration in Africa, which the approach offers. The difference concerning the system and its impression on the political aspects is completed in alliance to America and Europe: In Africa, the relocation ideal functions in diverse situations. Emigration from the country is not trailed by development in output, instead of by its Immobility, not to say its dilapidation.

It is consequently not additional work but an abrupt flight of the whole populace, abandoning in its stir countryside lacking individuals and production. Therefore, African movements have not established the same upshot for development and economic progress as migration has completed elsewhere. Thus, the study gives us a method of considering exoduses in Africa that highlights constructions, organizations, circumstances of reality, and their historical progress, even though unrequited inquiries and matters persist.

This qualitative descriptive phenomenological study explores the Liberian refugees' experiences with pastoral counseling in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a result of Liberia's two civil wars (1989-1997/1999-2003), these refugees were privileged to migrate to the United States and settled in many parts of the United States. Through the Qualitative descriptive phenomenology approach, the study will help understand the Liberian refugees' experiences who have had pastoral counseling in Charlotte. Husserl designed the study approach to facilitate understanding of the human experience (Englander, 2016).

The qualitative method is incredibly significant in the scholarly investigation as it discourses the how and why examination inquiries and allows profound consideration of understandings, wonders, and background. The qualitative analysis permits us to inquire what cannot be effortlessly put into statistics to know humans (Hammarberg et al., 2016). The descriptive phenomenological study design will help enhance the direct description and investigation of the Liberian refugees' experiences through pastoral counseling. Thus, the qualitative descriptive phenomenological study will play a vital role in facilitating the study of the Liberian refugee's experience regarding pastoral counseling.

The descriptive phenomenological approach that will be applied in this research by the researcher is the gathering of data from extensive open-ended, unstructured interviews with ten former refugee volunteers. The qualitative method is appropriate for this study because it is used, according to Hammarberg et al. (2016), to answer questions about perspective, experience, and meaning, most often from the participant's opinion. The advantage of using this method is that the data collected will not be subjected to manipulations, such as calculations. The descriptive phenomenological design will be appropriate because it will aim to safeguard the experiences of the participants. According to Jackson, Vaughan, and Brown (2018), descriptive phenomenology ascertains the structure, which is the experience rather than the researcher's subjective interpretation.

Population and Sample

The population for this study is the pastoral counselors. These counselors need a train on how to offer specialized services, especially to support families, relationships, individual counseling needs, and premarital issues. Primarily, the pastoral therapist is a certified mental well-being expert who possesses spiritual teaching and religious training. Pastoral therapists offer therapeutic backing and spiritual leadership to individuals in want of all ages and situations (Zong & Batalova, 2015). In the US, there are a vast number of therapists who offer the services; however, for this research, we were in considerations of the 2 million of its citizens. This sample will be essential in examining the role of pastoral services in guidance on migrants leaving their homes. This is because they undergo mental disturbances that need to be addressed holistically.

This researcher will endeavor to research the basic types of pastoral care and counseling rendered to the Liberian refugees. The sample size of voluntary participants will be ten (10). In qualitative research, as Creswell, J.W. et al. (2016) stated, there is no fixed number of participants; interviews can include five to twenty-five individuals through any multiple interviews or rare in-depth interviews until saturation of data is achieved. For this research, a sample group of ten former refuges (N=10) will be used. This group will be divided into five groups with two respondents of the opposite gender, a male and a female. This will ensure that we gather adequate information on experiences from both genders. For inclusion in this research, an individual should be a former refugee who traces their origin from Liberia, who can fluently speak English or French. The desired result from these interviews will be the outcome of whether the pastoral counselors' counseling was aimed at giving holistic care to the refugees, to include what Starasta, L. R. (2015) refers to as cultivating wholeness in seven dimensions of life, i.e., mental, physical, relational, ethical, play, society, and nature.

Strategy and Materials

 A qualitative method will be used in this study to gather in-depth data of participants' lives and experiences. Before the onset of the study, this method will be reviewed and approved by the Review Board of Northcentral University. This qualitative study will consist of interviews conducted via zoom, skype, WebEx of a phone with recruited refugees from Liberia (Adedoyin et al., 2016). All recorded interviews are expected to last approximately 30 minutes in length and are done in English with a verbal consent process. Each participant will complete a demographic survey that will provide the researcher with primary participant's information to include gender, age. This information is deemed necessary to contextualize the data from the individual interviews.

For this study, we will use semi-structured interviews as data collection instruments. The purpose of this tool is to gather comprehensive data concerning the demographic characteristics of the participants used in this study. Specifically, the study strategically selects a significant number of respondents who are in a position to present all the problems experienced on the actual grounds. We can, therefore, include a group of 3 people with knowledge about the population and the research topic, who will offer responses concerning the appropriateness of the questions and their applicability with the proposed sample group. This will thus be useful in ensuring the generation of successful interviews, which are well structured, clear, gentle, balanced, and ethically sensitive. Also, the questions should be remembered, open, and gentle, allowing the respondents to think and answer with ease without feeling offended critically.

Study Procedures

After IRB approval, recruitment will occur at X using Y; data collection will occur Z. To begin the process, this researcher will first schedule with each potential participant a personal meeting via Zoom to clarify the disposition of the study and discuss the following issues: informed consent, confidentiality, and the option to cease participating at any time for each participant. In addition, this Zoom meeting will include a review of the consent form in detail, ensuring participants fully understood the purpose of the study and agreed to take part.

For data collection, interviews will be audiotaped with a digital recording device and then be transcribed verbatim. The contents of the transcriber of the focus groups will be analyzed using the most recent version of NCU to facilitate the creation of critical initial themes. Utilizing the recommendation of Atkinson, P. (2018).  A "case study" process will be employed to bring about thematic sub-narratives from each transcript and then compared said across interviews.

At the end of each interview session and during the verification process, the researcher will ask each participant whether they needed to add to or subtract anything from their story. The data collected from this process will be analyzed using the comparative analysis method from the grounded theory approach.

Data Analysis

Data gathered from the respondents, through interviews need to be analyzed to make sense of the data. This includes the audio recorded in the tapes. For instance, transcripts will be categorized by searching individual narratives for data concerning specified topics and coded. Categorizing involved organizing coded data units into groups identified through similar characteristics (Braithwaite et al., 2017). All interviews with the refugees will be recorded using a digital recording device, and these recordings will be saved for future reference.

The content analysis of the transcripts will also be done, while the transcripts will be coded and further categorized by using the individual narratives for the data.  The researcher will provide consent forms written in English, the participant's language of choice; the researcher will also explain privacy and confidentiality throughout the research process. Upon obtaining consent, the researcher will ask participants to fill out a demographic questionnaire and then collect data through semi-structured interviews, recorded, and transcribed verbatim. The researcher planned to conduct home interviews with the participants and acquired office spaces. Each interview session will be held depending on the amount of information provided for one to two hours.

Assumptions

Researches are categorized with various philosophical assumptions. In the same way, qualitative researches are also based on believes and theories, which need to be pointed in the study (Carnaghan, 2013). One of the assumptions is that there will be adequate respondents who are willing to take part in the research and they will be in demand of payment or other incentives. It is also assumed that respondents will be ready to interact with the researchers and now that we are amid the coronavirus pandemic, they will be willing to engage in mobile or online interviews to minimize face-to-face interactions.

Limitations

Although I plan to prepare this research carefully, I am still aware of its shortcomings and limitations. Limitations are considered the influences that I cannot control, those areas that are out of the researcher's control. My proposed study is expected to be conducted in a limited space of time with ten participants (Liberian Refugees) who have undergone counseling from pastoral counselors. Other limitations that are likely to be faced include challenges to maintain, assess and demonstrate rigor.

Overly, qualitative research is time-consuming in the interpretation of data; for this research, we need to determine the experience of all the refugees' population in the Southeastern mid-sized City cannot suffice for this researcher to observe all pastoral counseling experiences of said population adequately. However, much effort is put into qualitative research; most of the time, this form of research is not well understood and thus not understood. Also, since the assessment of the participants by the researcher himself, there is a certain degree of subjectivity that will be found in this unavoidable study, which might affect their response. Additionally, this research nature has problems with maintaining confidentiality and anonymity, especially when presenting findings.

Delimitations

This researcher will not include statistical methods and instead qualitative methods, as they would not be sufficient in an analysis of the descriptive data presented. Additionally, we will not include discussion groups as a method of data collection; this is due to the current condition of the coronavirus pandemic. This research would also omit all other groups of the Negros living in the US refugee camps despite portraying common characteristics. This will ensure that the research does not lose focus on the target groups of the Liberians.

           The reason for subsequent justifications and delimitations will most definitely assist the researcher in maintaining the studied objectivity. Moreover, such parameters will also help future researchers in their efforts to reconstruct advance or similar research on this same topic. Finally, delimitations will be the scope where the researcher can conclude findings in determining the external validity or reliability of the said study.

Ethical Assurances

Anonymity/confidentiality will be achieved by interviewing one participant and not recording identifying information of participants; only the research team will have access to the collected data. Additionally, to ensured anonymity/confidentiality, a verbal consent process will be applied since participants' identifying information will not be recorded on paper (Hammarberg et al., 2016). Participants will include adults over 18 with refugee status who have resettled in the United States within the past five years.

Approval for this study will be obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Dissertation Research Committee of Northcentral University. Verbal consent will be sought in place of written consent to avoid suspicion of the forms and to maintain the casual atmosphere of the setting. Though participants will not be compensated for their participation, to successfully carry interviews use of phone and online, which can be made successful through offering internet funds.

The researcher will transcribe all-digital recordings of the online or phone interviews. Participants will also be informed that transcripts reproduced, whether in papers or presentations, will exclude identifying information. Thus, all digital recordings will be saved to password-protected storage devices and written transcripts and password-protected in computer files. Furthermore, the researcher will deliberately include in this study fictitious names to represent participants rather than identifying them in any form or faction by their last of first names or with any other information.

As an ethical consideration, the informants will decide whether to participate in the research or not. First, nobody should take part in the study without their consent. Secondly, the research will only take place in line with the laws and regulations of the land. In interviewing these refugees, only the concepts required by the law should be included in the interviews.

Summary