CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY This chapter discusses the research questions and presents the rationale for adopting a qualitative and phenomenological approach to study the phenomenon of happiness I describe the sadhus’ lifestyle followed by subsections on the selection criteria, sample size, the strategy used to locate real sadhus and my experience meeting the sadhus The discussion’s focus moves to phenomenological data collection methods adopted in this study, followed by data coding and analysis techniques used in this research The chapter concludes by discussing the validity threats that could have affected the study results The literature review found that debates on human happiness have been going on for the past 2,500 years Recently, the “happiness” topic gained popularity with the emergence and growth of a new branch of psychology, positive psychology, the science of happiness (Seligman et al., 2005) However, the literature review found three gaps The first gap was the knowledge gap, in that the past research on happiness did not adequately explore the question—what happiness is? Some researchers who did try to explore the phenomenon of happiness (Feldman, 2010b; Haybron, 2011; Lu, 2001; Ryff & Singer, 2008), concluded that happiness is a psychological state of mind The present study aimed at confirming if happiness actually is a mental state As for the second methodological gap, there is no doubt that the philosophical and theological literature includes many writings on happiness (Aquinas, 1991; Aristotle, 2017) Much research on happiness has already been conducted with remarkable success, however, most research in the past adopted quantitative approaches to study happiness 59