Creative Research Methods 2e. Kara, Helen
whose native language is different from the language in which the research is being conducted;
•working with people who speak different languages from each other;
•working with people who have cognitive impairments such as mild dementia;
•working with children;
•honouring, eliciting and expressing cultural ways of knowing.
Box 2.5: Arts-based life-story research by O’Neill
UK researcher Maggie O’Neill works with transnational refugees and asylum seekers ‘in the space between ethnography and art’ (O’Neill 2008: 3). She collaborates with her participants, who come from countries such as Afghanistan and Bosnia, and with a variety of professional artists including writers, poets, photographers and performance artists. The aim is to enable refugees and asylum seekers to tell their own stories and to use these stories to inform theory, policy and practice. O’Neill’s view is that life stories, art and collaboration are all transformative – that is, they can challenge stereotypical perceptions and received wisdom. She writes: ‘Art makes visible experiences, hopes, ideas; it is a reflective space and socially it brings something new into the world – it contributes to knowledge and understanding’ (O’Neill 2008: 8).
Arts-based research is often particularly useful for investigating topics associated with high levels of emotion (Prendergast 2009a: xxii–xxiii). Emotion is linked with creativity, and some specific emotions, such as happiness and sadness, have been found to promote creativity (Hutton and Sundar 2010: 301). Happiness encourages creativity in general, while sadness promotes analytical thought, which also supports creativity (Hutton and Sundar 2010: 301). This may go some way towards explaining why a lot of autoethnographic studies focus on sad subjects such as serious illness, grief, bereavement and trauma (Pelias 2019: 25–6; see also Stone 2009; Sliep 2012).
Embodied research can be seen as a reaction to the ‘disembodied methodologies’ (Ellingson 2017: 6; Thanem and Knights 2019: 10), such as positivism, that dominated Euro-Western research in the 20th century. Thanem and Knights examined 20 methods and methodology books, running to over 8,000 pages in total, and found only 20 references to the body or embodiment (Thanem and Knights 2019: 13). Even authors who make a point of championing reflexivity express it as a primarily cognitive exercise, sometimes with a side order of emotion, but no acknowledgement of the body and its role (Thanem and Knights 2019: 12–13).
Nevertheless, we all experience the world through our bodies, and acknowledging this ‘brings new conceptual lenses to research practices’ (Lala and Kinsella 2011: 78). However, researchers using embodied methods may or may not focus on their own bodies. Some do – for example, Jonas Larsen (2014: 64) in his autoethnographic study of cycling in Copenhagen and London. Others focus primarily on participants’ bodies, particularly where there is an evident bodily dimension, as in much of disability studies, sports studies or fat studies, to give just three examples. And others still apply the techniques of embodied research to address questions where bodies are not the main focus, for example, Elena Vacchelli (2018: 49) in her research with migrants.
Box 2.6: Embodied research by Finlay
Integrative psychotherapist and phenomenological researcher Linda Finlay drew on her therapeutic skills to focus on her own body and those of her research participants in an ‘embodied intersubjective relationship’ (Finlay 2014: 5). She argues that this relationship can be used to explore participants’ experiences and lifeworlds. For Finlay, ‘the body acts as a sensor, a detector of meaning which helps us empathize with, interpret and understand participants’ experiences. If we’re alert, physical sensations and our own felt-sense arising out of the relational space between can provide crucial cues’ (Finlay 2014: 6; original emphasis). When we try to understand others, Finlay says, we use our senses in a holistic and interconnected way: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and our mental and emotional senses too, including forethought and intuition. Because of the intertwining and mirroring we experience in relation to others (touch between people is simultaneous), we come to understand ourselves through the gaze of others: we experience a ‘somatic duet’ between ourselves and our participants (Finlay 2014: 7).
Laura Ellingson (2017: 7–8) sets out what she regards as the benefits of practising embodied research.
•It enables learning about topics that cannot otherwise be known.
•It opens up new possibilities for analysis and representation.
•Attention to embodiment can help to validate research in innovative ways.
•Messages of embodiment, or embodied messages, can be more accessible, engaging and memorable for audiences.
Research explicitly using embodied methods has been criticised on various grounds such as being apolitical, narcissistic and self-interested (Thanem and Knights 2019: 9). Yet, in one sense all research that people do always has been and always will be embodied. Nevertheless, in any given research project the extent to which researchers engage with embodiment may vary. It is certainly the case with embodied methods, as with all creative research methods, that good research practice should be maintained throughout. Among other things, this means making an appropriate decision about whether – and, if so, when and how much – to focus on embodiment.
Multi-modal research in practice
Multi-modal research has increased in popularity since the late 1980s (Alasuutari 2009: 139). The term ‘multi-modal research’ covers a whole host of different approaches to the research process, which may contain both qualitative and quantitative elements. It can also be used to describe qualitative or quantitative research using more than one method (Frost et al 2010; Fielding 2012: 125; Lal et al 2012). The most common ‘mixed-methods’ research involves data gathered by more than one technique, usually questionnaires and interviews (Fielding 2012: 131). As several examples in this book show, multi-modal research can be much more complex (for example, Boxes 2.7 and 2.8).
Box 2.7: Multi-modal research by Petros
Sabela Petros studied the support needs of older South African people who care for children or grandchildren affected by HIV/AIDS. He and his colleagues surveyed 305 urban and rural carers of people living with HIV/AIDS and/or vulnerable orphaned children. They then conducted interviews with ten respondents, purposively selected because they fulfilled two conditions: (a) they had given responses to the survey that the researchers had not anticipated, and (b) they were caring for both adults with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable orphaned children. The data from these interviews was later used to construct case studies. Petros also interviewed nine purposively selected ‘key informants’ (Petros 2012: 279) – senior managers, six from the government and three from NGOs – to find out about legislation and policy on HIV/AIDS. The datasets were analysed separately before being compared to assess the level of corroborated or divergent findings, which helped to contextualise the carers’ experiences. This was the first multi-modal study of this topic in South Africa, and it enabled a number of new comparisons, including differences between urban and rural areas, and differences between carers’ and officials’ views of the situation, as well as the identification of gaps in public policy and ways in which these could be remedied (Petros 2012: 290–1).
It is also possible to combine methods in other ways, such as by conducting research that draws on more than one theoretical perspective (for example, Kaufman 2010; Macmillan 2011), or that has a team of researchers from different disciplines (for example, Sameshima and Vandermause 2009) or that analyses data in more than one way (for example, Frost et al 2010). Presentation and dissemination of research often uses more than one method.
Box 2.8: Multi-modal research by Robinson et al
Andrew Robinson and his colleagues