Data Dreaming

Posted by Helen Kara

Inspired by my last post on ‘What is data?‘, a researcher – who needs to remain anonymous – has written this guest post for my blog.

As an interdisciplinary researcher working in arts/health/humanities contexts, I am interested in the language used to discuss data: terms such as ‘rich’ and ‘noisy’ refer to ‘evidence’ that is complex or messy. Data can take many forms as Helen Kara’s blog (and books) articulate, and can also carry different values. The power practices played out between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms are also evident in the history of arts-based practice research as a poor relation to written outputs. We are on a long journey towards recognition and understanding of arts paradigms in terms of audits, funding and, most importantly, knowledge.

Last Thursday (17 March 2022), academics in receipt of grants from UK research councils were busy submitting their annual outputs to ‘Research Fish’, a reporting system for the outputs of grant funded projects. The research leads are required to complete online forms with details of all the material that has been produced that is associated with the grant. Reports are required while the research is ongoing and for five years after funding has ended. For arts-based researchers, this exercise can feel like a process of putting a square peg in a round hole due to the scientific bias of the reporting format and categories. Even the section on the impact narrative seems to offer limited opportunity to discuss how research can positively impact on individuals; I found myself ticking the ‘other’ box rather too frequently after wrestling with the different categories offered on the form. I even wondered whether the timing of the Helen Kara’s blog addressing the vexed issue of ‘What is data?’ had been deliberate or a happy/unhappy accident in view of the deadline that day for the Research Fish audit.

Fishing completed, I returned to my emails to find an urgent message about one of the funded projects I’d just reported on. This research grant was in its final year and involved a team of arts practitioners facilitating creative workshops to explore questions about adolescent identities and mental health. A query had been raised by the funder during an audit of expenditure and I was informed that a consumables cost had been removed as it was deemed ineligible due to not being ‘directly related to the research being carried out’. The items identified were tote bags and their contents: journals, badges, craft materials and sensory tools (fidget toys).

The justification we provided was that the items were being used to support the practical workshops in schools and were part of the data collection. Participants used the journals during the workshop, responding to prompts and tasks through writing or drawing (giving us insights into their thoughts, feelings, experiences through creative processes); hence these were an important source of data contributing to our analysis. The bags contained pens, badges (used for communication preferences as well as names), arts materials for making activities and what are known as ‘fidget or stim toys’ (for sensory play/stimming). These ensured participants had access to the same set of resources, which is important for parity and inclusion. The stim toys were particularly valuable and popular with our neurodivergent participants, enabling the researchers and teachers to understand more about the role of stimming for this population (regulating emotion, facilitating focus, supporting processing). This was also important to creating a sense of group identity as the stim tools were something the participants used to interact with each other as well as individually. One participant described the resource as ‘my little bag of heaven’. The impact narrative for this project referred to a headteacher describing it as ‘changing lives’ due to the impact on individuals and the school as a whole.

There is pleasure and joy through the learning co-produced in these rich interdisciplinary research environments; the activities can produce tacit knowledge and felt understanding, the ‘moments of being’ Virginia Woolf describes, in which we perceive a new reality working in the arts/science interface. However, the query about the research rationale for these materials (and their relevance to the data) reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s fishing analogy in her essay ‘Professions for Women’ and her description of a young girl writing in contexts where a dominant authority stifles the work of an/other:

‘The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience, the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl’s fingers. Her imagination had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber. And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion. The imagination had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say.’

Arts practices are embodied research approaches, requiring arts materials to ‘probe the dark places where the largest fish slumber’. I can only dream of a future heaven where this is no longer ‘unfitting’ for us as researchers to say, but instead is understood and valued as data.

Getting Creative with your Thesis or Dissertation #3

Posted by Helen Kara

embroidery I have some more examples of creative doctoral work for you, and this time they’re all from the UK. (If you haven’t seen my previous posts on this topic, which include examples from other parts of the globe, they’re here and here.) They are also all from Twitter without which my work and life would be very much harder.

Chris Bailey, from Sheffield Hallam University, investigated the lived experience of an after-school Minecraft club. (For the uninitiated, Minecraft is a computer game which is itself creative and educational.) Chris wrote his thesis abstract as a comic strip. Parts of the thesis are conventional text and other parts are in comic strip form. He also uses the comic format to present data excerpts. Further, Chris uses images and a soundscape as integral parts of his thesis, and even represents the soundscape visually in a variety of ways.

Kate Fox, herself a poet and stand-up comedy and poetry performer, included comedy and poetry in her thesis from the University of Leeds. She was studying resistance in solo stand-up performance by Northern English women. There are poems in every chapter, and Kate uses an ‘interrupting voice’ throughout her thesis, in italic text, to illustrate the dialogic nature of stand-up in some very funny ways. For Kate, stand-up ‘can function as an academic methodology and critical pedagogy’ – I think many of us would like to see more of that!

Jenny Hall, from the University of the West of England (though now at Bournemouth University), used creative inquiry to study ‘the essence of the art of a midwife’ for her EdD. Jenny collected written personal histories, conducted ‘educational sessions’ that involved making, and used photo-elicitation with her participants. She also kept a reflexive research diary and used this to create a textile quilt with squares made as a response to individual diary entries, in a form of creative autoethnography. Jenny’s ‘Midwifery Quilt’ now has its own website.

Clare Danek is currently investigating ways in which people learn amateur craft making skills in community making spaces for a PhD from the University of Leeds. So this is something of a departure as she doesn’t yet have a finished thesis or dissertation, though I’m sure that day will come. Clare is keeping a diary of her PhD which is relevant here as it’s a ‘stitch journal’, as she calls it, using textile art. Also, she is documenting the process online. I am increasingly interested in the ways in which researchers are using creative methods for process as well as output. However, this is not generally well documented so it’s great to see Clare making her journal available as she creates. I’m sure this will help and inspire others.

It seems to me that doctoral students are increasingly finding their creative voices, and that more supervisors and examiners are willing to support this process. I am sure that part of this is due to the existence of precedents such as those listed here and in previous posts. These precedents – and, I’m told, also my book on creative research methods and its bibliography – enable doctoral students to build convincing academic arguments for the use of creative approaches that help to persuade reluctant supervisors. I am delighted to be able to witness and support this quiet revolution in academia.

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Evaluating excellence in arts-based research: a case study

Posted by Helen Kara

This article first appeared in Funding Insight on 16 June 2016 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

peacock-536478__340 I recently wrote on this topic citing the work of Sarah J Tracy from Arizona State University, who developed a set of eight criteria for assessing the quality of arts-based and other forms of qualitative and mixed-methods research. Now I propose to apply those criteria to an example of arts-based research, to find out how they can work in practice.

The research example I have chosen is by Jennifer Lapum and her colleagues from Toronto in Canada, who investigated 16 patients’ experiences of open-heart surgery. Their work is methodologically interesting because they used arts-based techniques, not only for data generation, but also for data analysis and dissemination. They published an account of their work in Qualitative Inquiry which I will interrogate here.

Lapum gathered narrative data from two interviews with post-operative patients, one while they were still in hospital and the other some weeks after returning home. Also, journals were kept by patients between the two interviews. She then put together a multi-disciplinary team of people, including artists, researchers, designers, and medical staff, and they spent a year doing arts-based analysis of the patients’ stories. This included metaphor analysis, poetic inquiry, sketching, concept mapping, and construction of photographic images. The team then developed an installation, covering 1,739 square feet, with seven sections representing the seven stages of a patient’s journey. These sections were arranged along a labyrinthine route, with the operating room at the centre, all hung with textile compositions incorporating poems and photographic images that had been generated at the analytic stage. Further dissemination via a short video on YouTube gives some idea of how it would be to visit this installation.

So how does this research fit with Tracy’s eight criteria? First we ask: is the research topic worthy? I would argue that in this case the answer is yes. Open-heart surgery must be a daunting prospect, even though the rewards can be immense. Lapum’s work offers potential patients and carers some insight into the journey they may take, and offers medical and other relevant staff an increased understanding of patients’ experiences. This is likely to improve outcomes for patients.

Second, is this project richly rigorous? The sample size is small, but the data was carefully constructed. Also, the analytic process was extremely thorough, with a multi-disciplinary team spending a year working with the data. Therefore I would conclude that this criterion has been met.

Do we have sincerity? Is the research reflexive, honest, and transparent? The published article is quite explicit about the methods used, and credits several people who have been involved with the process. The article asserts that the research was reflective, though the article itself is not. Nor do the writers outline all the decisions they took in the course of analysis and dissemination. However, space in a journal article is limited – but there is no mention of what was left out and why. So the research as presented here is sincere up to a point, but there is scope for more reflexivity and transparency.

What about credibility? There is certainly thick description and multiplicity of voices and perspectives in this research. Also, while the research team did not include participants as such, contributions were made by ‘knowledge users’ including cardiovascular health practitioners and former heart surgery patients. So, in Tracy’s terms, this research is definitely credible.

The next criterion is resonance. The installation certainly had aesthetic merit. It was generalisable to some extent: certainly to heart surgery patients and practitioners from other geographic locations, and perhaps to patients and practitioners of other kinds of major organ surgery. And it was also transferable: ‘we found people of diverse backgrounds not only resonated with the work but were also able to consider the application of these ideas to their lives and/or professional field’ (Lapum et al 2012:221). So, yes, it was resonant.

Did this research make a significant contribution? It evidently extended the knowledge, and may have improved the practice, of the research team. The project was methodologically unusual, and explicitly aimed to engage the audience’s aesthetic and emotional faculties, as well as their intellectual abilities, in responding to the research findings. However, there is no report of the installation’s impact on its audience but, again, this may be due to lack of space. So I would argue that this criterion was met, and the research may in fact have made a more significant contribution than we can discern from one journal article.

How ethical was the research? The article does not mention ethics, though it seems inevitable that the research must have received formal ethical approval. The level of thought and care applied to the research suggests that it was ethical, though this is implicit rather than explicit. But, once again, this may be due to space constraints.

And finally, does the research have meaningful coherence? The article tells an engaging and comprehensible story, so yes, it does.

It is perhaps unfair to judge a long and complex research project on the basis of a single journal article of just a few thousand words. Lapum and her colleagues have published several articles about their research; to make a full judgement I should really read them all. However, if the authors had carried out an analysis of their article based on Tracy’s criteria, they might have chosen to add a sentence or two about what they left out, a paragraph or two on reflexivity, a short description of the impact of the installation on its audience, and some information about ethics. The article as it stands is excellent; with these amendments, it could have been outstanding. This demonstrates that Tracy’s criteria are useful for assessing not only research itself, but also reports of research.

How to evaluate excellence in arts-based research

Posted by Helen Kara

This article first appeared in Funding Insight on 19 May 2016 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

judgement Researchers, research commissioners, and research funders all struggle with identifying good quality arts-based research. ‘I know it when I see it’ just doesn’t pass muster. Fortunately, Sarah J Tracy of Arizona State University has developed a helpful set of criteria that are now being used extensively to assess the quality of qualitative research, including arts-based and qualitative mixed-methods research.

Tracy’s conceptualisation includes eight criteria: worthy topic, rich rigour, sincerity, credibility, resonance, significant contribution, ethics, and meaningful coherence. Let’s look at each of those in a bit more detail.

A worthy topic is likely to be significant, meaningful, interesting, revealing, relevant, and timely. Such a topic may arise from contemporary social or personal phenomena, or from disciplinary priorities.

Rich rigour involves care and attention, particularly to sampling, data collection, and data analysis. It is the antithesis of the ‘quick and dirty’ research project, requiring diligence on the part of the researcher and leaving no room for short-cuts.

Sincerity involves honesty and transparency. Reflexivity is the key route to honesty, requiring researchers to interrogate and display their own impact on the research they conduct. Transparency focuses on the research process, and entails researchers disclosing their methods and decisions, the challenges they faced, any unexpected events that affected the research, and so on. It also involves crediting all those who have helped the researcher, such as funders, participants, or colleagues.

Credibility is a more complex criterion which, when achieved, produces research that can be perceived as trustworthy and on which people are willing to base decisions. Tracy suggests that there are four dimensions to achieving credibility: thick description, triangulation/crystallization, multiple voices, and participant input beyond data provision. Thick description means lots of detail and illustration to elucidate meanings which are clearly located in terms of theoretical, cultural, geographic, temporal, and other such location markers. Triangulation and crystallisation are both terms that refer to the use of multiplicity within research, such as through using multiple researchers, theories, methods, and/or data sources. The point of multiplicity is to consider the research question in a variety of ways, to enable the exploration of different facets of that question and thereby create deeper understanding. The use of multiple voices, particularly in research reporting, enables researchers more accurately to reflect the complexity of the research situation. Participant input beyond data provision provides opportunities for verification and elaboration of findings, and helps to ensure that research outputs are understandable and implementable.

Although all eight criteria are potentially relevant to arts-based research, resonance is perhaps the most directly relevant. It refers to the ability of research to have an emotional impact on its audiences or readers. Resonance has three aspects: aesthetic merit, generalisability, and transferability. Aesthetic merit means that style counts alongside, and works with, content, such that research is presented in a beautiful, evocative, artistic and accessible way. Generalisability refers to the potential for research to be valuable in a range of contexts, settings, or circumstances. Transferability is when an individual reader or audience member can take ideas from the research and apply them to their own situation.

Research can contribute to knowledge, policy, and/or practice, and will make a significant contribution if it extends knowledge or improves policy or practice. Research may also make a significant contribution to the development of methodology; there is a lot of scope for this with arts-based methods.

Several of the other criteria touch on ethical aspects of research. For example, many researchers would argue that reflexivity is an ethical necessity. However, ethics in research is so important that it also requires a criterion of its own. Tracy’s conceptualisation of ethics for research evaluation involves procedural, situational, relational, and exiting ethics. Procedural ethics refers to the system of research governance – or, for those whose research is not subject to formal ethical approval, the considerations therein such as participant welfare and data storage. Situational ethics requires consideration of the specific context for the research and how that might or should affect ethical decisions. Relational ethics involve treating others well during the research process: offering respect, extending compassion, keeping promises, and so on. And exiting ethics cover the ways in which researchers present and share findings, as well as aftercare for participants and others involved in the research.

Research that has meaningful coherence effectively does what it sets out to do. It will tell a clear story. That story may include paradox and contradiction, mess and disturbance. Nevertheless, it will bring together theory, literature, data and analysis in an interconnected and comprehensible way.

These criteria are not an unarguable rubric to which every qualitative researcher must adhere. Indeed there are times when they will conflict in practice. For example, you may have a delightfully resonant vignette, but be unable to use it because it would identify the participant concerned; participants may not be willing or able to be involved beyond data provision; and all the diligence in the world can’t guarantee a significant contribution. So, as always, researchers need to exercise their powers of thought, creativity, and improvisation in the service of good quality research, and use the criteria flexibly, as guidelines rather than rules. However, what these criteria do offer is a very helpful framework for assessing the likely quality of research at the design stage, and the actual quality of research on completion.

Next week I will post a case study demonstrating how these criteria can be used.