• • Religious change among Muslims in prison exhibits not only individual depth, emotion and intensity, but also national and international patterns and breadth.

• • This combination of breadth and depth called for a mixed-methods approach:

• • we used quantitative questionnaires to capture significant, broad patterns of belief, attitudes and behaviour across Muslims in different prisons and jurisdictions;

• • we used the qualitative research tools of face-to-face interviews and observations of Islamic Studies classes and Friday Prayer to plumb the depths of the experience of the individual Muslims and to explore the reasons behind the patterns that we had identified through our quantitative questionnaires.

• • We applied our research methods in the following sequence:

  • 1. pilot semi-structured interviews to test our theoretical framework and identify suitable quantitative variables;

  • 2. quantitative attitudinal questionnaires;

  • 3. full semi-structured interviews coupled with

  • 4. observations of Friday Prayer and Islamic Studies classes.

• We conducted:

• • 279 attitudinal questionnaires with prisoners;

• • 158 interviews with prisoners, average length circa 45 minutes;

• • 19 interviews with Muslim prison chaplains, average length circa 60 minutes;

• • 41 interviews with prison officers, average length circa 40 minutes;

• • 15 interviews with prison governors, average length circa 40 minutes.

• In doing so, we looked at Islam in prison through the lenses of multiple methods and the perspectives of multiple types of people living and working in prison.