Creative Research Methods 2e. Kara, Helen
techniques to gain a fuller picture of the subject under investigation. Now we are moving to the term ‘multi-modal’ because research may be entirely quantitative or entirely qualitative and still incorporate more than one method.
The development of research techniques, whether quantitative or qualitative, has involved enormous creativity (Gergen and Jones 2008: 1). The opportunities for expanding these techniques offered by technology, arts-based approaches, mixing methods and so on may seem to confuse matters. But perhaps we are just returning to the view of the polymaths: that knowledge is worth having, no matter where it originates, and the more diverse someone’s knowledge, the more likely they are to be able to identify and implement creative solutions to problems. It is entirely possible that, if we could get past the idea of art and science being poles apart, the two approaches could inform and sustain each other as they evidently used to do (Gergen and Gergen 2012: 15).
Some scholars are also questioning the compartmentalisation of different disciplines. Work across disciplinary boundaries is becoming more common (for example, Lyon, Möllering and Saunders 2012: 13), as is an understanding of research as too broad an activity to fit into any single disciplinary category. Some argue that art and science need not be oppositional and can be complementary, with no hard line between the two (for example, Ellingson 2009: 5, 60). Phenomenologists tend to regard their research as both an art and a science, although different phenomenologists may disagree about the relative weighting of science and art in research (Finlay 2012: 27). It is interesting to note that a new UK university intends to open in 2021, the London Interdisciplinary School, which aims to equip students with knowledge and methods from across the disciplines.
Qualitative and multi-modal methods have not always been considered part of good research practice. Creative methods, too, have been seen by some researchers and research funders as inferior. Some people in positions of power, such as doctoral examiners, managers and government research directors, still reify quantitative or conventional methods and struggle – or refuse – to accept qualitative, multi-modal or creative approaches. However, as this book demonstrates, more and more researchers are finding creative approaches essential.
Creative is not synonymous with innovative. There is growing pressure on researchers to innovate, and, as a result, innovation is often overstated in an effort to get funded or published (Wiles et al 2011: 594). Of course some methods are innovative, and some that are both innovative and creative will be featured in this book, but some methods for which innovation is claimed are actually creative rather than innovative.
There is also scope for creativity in the use of conventional methods. For example, focus groups were first used in the 1940s, and so can hardly be described as ‘innovative’ today. But there is still scope for creativity within focus group methodology. For example, Belzile and Öberg (2012) draw on a wide body of literature to demonstrate that few researchers using focus groups pay attention to the interactions between participants, with most researchers treating focus group data in the same way as data from individual interviews. Belzile and Öberg use this insight to create a framework for researchers that is designed to support the inclusion of participant interaction within focus group design. There are many other examples of researchers taking a creative approach to a conventional method.
Another common misconception is that creative methods are for, and only used by, researchers in the arts and social sciences. In fact, researchers in the humanities and STEM disciplines are also finding inspiration from creative practices (Box 1.1). For example, in mathematics the problem of how to model hyperbolic geometry puzzled mathematicians for centuries until, in the 1990s, Daina Taimina realised it could be done with crochet (Henderson and Taimina 2001). ‘Crochet thinking’ is now being used in academia as a conceptual model for architectural design (Baurmann and Taimina 2013).
Box 1.1: Colleen Campbell: a scientist-artist
Colleen Campbell is a field biologist and artist. She has spent the last 20 years studying coyotes and grizzly bears in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and has travelled widely in the Canadian Arctic and the Himalayas. Her fieldwork involves conventional scientific methods such as humanely capturing, recording, tagging and tracing wild animals and analysing their DNA. She also draws the animals she studies, so as to increase her own understanding and to help her share information in accessible ways. Campbell incorporates traditional stories into her research work, recognising that coyotes and bears have been powerful archetypal figures for humans for millennia. There is a spiritual element to these stories, and to Campbell’s use of textile art to create ‘prayer flags for bears’, inspired by Tibetan prayer flags. These are designed, drawn and painted by Campbell, then digitally printed on silk and assembled into strings of ten different flags before being installed in a variety of locations. Campbell also created an ‘ursagraphic’ – a map showing Canadian places named after ‘bear’ in every language she has been able to identify. Her overall aim is to help preserve the welfare and the future of the animals she studies (Campbell 2019).
Following others in the Euro-Western literature, the first edition of this book classified decolonising methodologies as a transformative research framework. After its publication I learned more and concluded that that was incorrect (Kara 2018: 2). Decolonising methodologies grew from Indigenous knowledge frameworks, as did Indigenous research. Indigenous research is a paradigm that pre-dates the Euro-Western research paradigm by tens of thousands of years (Cram et al 2013: 11). All Indigenous peoples conduct research to help improve the world (Kouritzin and Nakagawa 2018: 9).
‘Indigenous’ is a contested term. I am using it here to refer to native peoples of lands colonised by settlers from elsewhere (Cram et al 2013: 16). Indigenous research methods are firmly embedded in Indigenous cultures and cannot be extracted for use elsewhere, so my aim in this book is not to offer Indigenous methods for my (no doubt predominantly) Euro-Western readers to use, but to raise awareness of the existence and value of Indigenous research.
Indigenous research practices and creative research methods have one thing in common: they are not always recognised as valid forms of knowledge creation by Euro-Western audiences. It seems that many Indigenous peoples are comfortable with creative research methods and readily understand, for example, arts-based methods as scholarship (Guntarik and Daley 2017: 412). Guntarik and Daley (2017: 413) say: ‘Sometimes, the accusation of lack of intellectual rigour toward Indigenous creative practice researchers is due to reviewers’ lack of familiarity with the gaps in knowledge and the flaws in conventional perspectives that Indigenous creative practice research is explicitly redressing.’ Some researchers using creative methods within the Euro-Western paradigm have also encountered problems with a lack of understanding of these methods and their purpose on the part of reviewers, managers and others in positions of authority.
It is good decolonising practice for Euro-Western scholars to inform ourselves about, and to use, Indigenous research – and, where possible, to work with Indigenous researchers. Developing the cultural sensitivity needed to work well with Indigenous researchers can be challenging for Euro-Western researchers and evaluators, yet it also offers considerable potential benefit (Scougall 2006; Hart et al 2017; Datta 2018).
There is a growing body of literature on these topics, some of which I cite in this book. Indigenous research ethics are particularly useful for Euro-Western researchers to learn about and reflect on, and these are addressed in Chapter 3.
What do we know about ‘creativity’?
Creativity is complex and notoriously hard to define (Carter 2004: 25, 39; Swann 2006: 9; Batey 2012: 55; Walsh et al 2013: 21). It is also difficult to measure (Villalba 2012: 1), and so it is