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Creative Research Methods

A Practical Guide

By helen kara.

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• Description

Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.

This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods:

• arts-based research

• embodied research

• research using technology

• multi-modal research

• transformative research frameworks.

Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.

Creative Research Methods has been cited over 750 times.

Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and specialises in research methods and ethics. She is the author of Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Time-Saving Guide (Policy Press, 2nd ed. 2017) and Research Ethics in the Real World: Euro-Western and Indigenous Perspectives (Policy Press, 2018). Helen is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Introducing Creative Research

Creative Research Methods in Practice

Transformative Research Frameworks and Indigenous Research

Creative Research Methods and Ethics

Creative Thinking

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Gathering

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Gathering

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Analysis

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Analysis

Arts-Based and Embodied Research Reporting

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Research Reporting

Arts-Based and Embodied Presentation

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Presentation

From Research Into Practice

Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work (Second Edition)

Edited by Saul Becker , Alan Bryman and Harry Ferguson

Find out more

Social Research with Children and Young People

By Louca-Mai Brady and Berni Graham

Doing Qualitative Desk-Based Research

By Barbara Bassot

Doing Your Research Project with Documents

By Aimee Grant

Doing Reflexivity

By Jon Dean

Creative Research Methods in Education

By Helen Kara , Narelle Lemon , Dawn Mannay and Megan McPherson

Critical Criminology and Literary Criticism

By Rafe McGregor

Qualitative and Digital Research in Times of Crisis

Edited by Helen Kara and Su-ming Khoo

Narrative Research Now

Edited by Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn

Photovoice Reimagined

By Nicole Brown

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis

Edited by Helen Kara , Dawn Mannay and Alastair Roy

Fiction and Research

By Becky Tipper and Leah Gilman

Doing Phenomenography

By Amanda Taylor-Beswick and Eva Hornung

Encountering the World with I-docs

By Ella Harris

Embedding Young People's Participation in Health Services

Edited by Louca-Mai Brady

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Creative Research Methods

A practical guide.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Policy Press
• Copyright year: 2020
• Audience: College/higher education;
• Main content: 320
• Other: 8 Black and White
• Published: September 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781447356769

• Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide

In this Book

• Kara, Helen
• Published by: Bristol University Press

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright
• List of figures and tables
• Debts of gratitude
• pp. vii-viii
• How this book can help
• 1. Introducing creative research
• 2. Creative research methods in practice
• 3. Creative research methods and ethics
• 4. Creative thinking
• 5. Gathering data
• 6. Analysing data
• 7. Writing for research
• pp. 121-136
• 8. Presentation
• pp. 137-160
• 9. Dissemination, implementation and knowledge exchange
• pp. 161-178
• 10. Conclusion
• pp. 179-182
• pp. 183-212
• pp. 213-221

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Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide Second Edition

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• ISBN-10 1447356748
• ISBN-13 978-1447356745
• Edition Second
• Publication date October 14, 2020
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.77 x 0.73 x 9.45 inches
• Print length 320 pages
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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Policy Press; Second edition (October 14, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1447356748
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1447356745
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.77 x 0.73 x 9.45 inches
• #500 in Social Sciences Methodology
• #860 in Education Research (Books)
• #1,015 in Social Sciences Research

About the author

Helen Kara is a leading independent researcher, author, teacher and speaker specialising in creative research methods, radical research ethics, and creative academic writing. With over 25 years’ experience as an independent researcher Helen teaches doctoral students and staff at higher education institutions worldwide. She is a prolific academic author with over 25 titles; notably Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide (2nd edn) and Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners (3rd edn). Besides her regular blogs and videos, she also writes comics and fiction. Helen is a Visiting Fellow at the National University of Australia and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2021, at the age of 56, she was diagnosed autistic. Her neurodiversity explains her lifelong fascination with, and ability to focus on, words, language and writing.

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Writing and research

creative research methods

Eight misconceptions about creative research methods.

There are still a lot of people who don’t really understand what creative research methods are, or what they are for, or when you might use them. These people are usually labouring under one misconception or another. So I thought it might be helpful to run through these misconceptions and explain why they are wrong.

1. Creative research methods are a new fad.

In fact research has always been a creative endeavour. The first clinical trial was conducted in the mid-18 th century. The questionnaire was invented in 1838 , interviews were first used by researchers in the early 20 th century, and focus groups were devised in the 1940s . So the questionnaire was created less than 200 years ago, and the focus group was created within living memory. And no doubt ingenious humans were devising a whole bunch of other ways to try to find out new information since long before the clinical trial was born.

2. Creative is the same as innovative.

This is more arguable; there is certainly a lot of overlap between creation and innovation. However, there is also scope for creativity in the use of conventional methods. A questionnaire may include appealing visual elements and be creatively laid out on the page or screen. It is still a questionnaire, but a more creative one than the usual online or paper form.

3. Creative research methods are only useful for qualitative research.

Actually a lot of quantitative and multi-modal researchers do very creative work. Much of this is at the further reaches of disciplines such as physics and electronics, but some is more accessible. Piper Harron wrote her pure maths doctoral dissertation in a very creative way. Daina Taimina solved a centuries-old problem in hyperbolic geometry using crochet . And field biologist Colleen Campbell uses artistic techniques alongside her scientific work with bears and coyotes.

4. Creative research is the same as arts-based research.

Arts-based research is a big sub-set of creative research methods, but not the whole story. There is some very creative work being done with digital methods, embodied methods, and methods in multi-modal research.

5. Arts-based research is all about visual methods.

This is perhaps understandable because we are such a visual species, but it is incorrect. Arts-based methods do include visual methods, for sure, but also writing, music, drama, dance, textile arts – the lot.

6. Creative methods do not involve rigour.

This is closely aligned to the misperception that states creative research methods are antithetical to good research practice. This is absolutely not the case. The key principles of good research practice – designing carefully, working systematically, disseminating widely etc – apply whether you are using creative or conventional methods, or a mix of the two.

7. Only creative people can use creative research methods.

This implies that some people are not creative; a viewpoint I do not embrace. I believe everyone is creative. We all co-create our relationships with other people, for a start. Making and maintaining relationships is a creative process because no two relationships are the same, and the different relationships we have with different people demand different responses from us. Also, you do not need any formal qualifications or recognised skills to be creative: you don’t need an arts degree to use arts-based methods effectively, or great technical acumen to use digital methods well.

8. Creative research methods are only useful for gathering data.

I think this misconception arises because of the general conflation of research with data gathering. It is the visible part of research; the part we are all, regularly, asked to participate in; the part that research ethics committees focus on. But it is far from the only stage of research where creative methods can be useful. In fact, creative methods can be used effectively at all stages of the research process.

Creative Research Methods in Practice

I have an exciting new venture to share with you. For the last couple of years I have been working with Policy Press on a new series of short affordable books on creative research methods in practice . And we have just gone public! The first book is on its way: Photovoice, Reimagined by Nicole Brown. And there are several more books in the pipeline. Two are being written right now – one on fiction in research, and one on phenomenography – and four other book proposals are under review.

I wanted to edit this series because there are no such books available to help researchers learn in detail about why, when, and how to use a new research method. There are several books giving an overview of creative research methods, within or across academic disciplines; some sole-authored, some edited collections. These are useful texts but they do not generally offer enough depth of information to enable readers to try out the methods for themselves with confidence. The main rationale for this new series is to do just that.

One of the hardest things to sort out was the design for the covers and webpage. That took months and a lot of emails, discussions, and meetings (most of which I didn’t need to attend, thank goodness). We almost agreed on some covers and then the sales and marketing people at Policy Press said the designs weren’t good enough. They were absolutely right. So we went back to the actual drawing board and started again. I am so pleased with the final result . I think hot air balloons are a delightful combination of science and art, innovation and exploration and adventure – just like creative research methods. (Let’s not focus too closely on the ‘hot air’ part, OK?!) Also Policy Press likes to have a Bristol element to their designs, and Bristol holds an annual International Balloon Fiesta – Europe’s largest event of its kind – so the design works from that viewpoint too.

I am so happy to be able to tell you about this new book series. And if you would like to propose a book for the series, do get in touch!

This blog and the videos on my YouTube channel are funded by my beloved Patrons . Patrons receive exclusive content and various rewards, depending on their level of support, such as access to my special private Patreon-only blog posts, bi-monthly Q&A sessions on Zoom, free e-book downloads and signed copies of my books. Patrons can also suggest topics for my blogs and videos. If you want to support me by becoming a Patron click here . Whilst ongoing support would be fantastic you can make a one-time donation instead, through the PayPal button on this blog, if that works better for you. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

International Creative Research Methods Conference

This may be the most exciting blog post I have ever written. I am founding a conference! This is an audacious move for an independent researcher, and there are several reasons why I have decided to make the leap.

First, I want to go to a conference on creative research methods! I helped to organise one in May 2015, with the Social Research Association and the British Library. It was a one-day conference and it was a great success. We had around 100 submissions for presentations, from four continents – and the creative research methods field has expanded massively since then. But, to the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been another one since.

Second, I have tried to persuade various organisations and institutions to host a conference on creative research methods, but none of them have been willing and able to do so.

Third, I am confident that there will be enough interest in this conference. There is no conference on creative research methods anywhere in the world. There are a couple of conferences on visual methods, and a few conferences on qualitative methods that will include creative methods. But that’s all. And I know a lot of people are working in this area now.

Fourth, I have saved enough money to take the financial risk of signing a contract with the venue. And this is a risk – it’s a five-figure sum – I do not want to lose that much money, but I could. Yet this is how confident I am that this conference will succeed: I am literally betting on it with my very own cash.

I have spent the summer picking people’s brains and making plans. I have organised events before, so I have some useful experience, but I am also grateful for the input of a whole bunch of people whose advice and support has been invaluable.

It will be a two-day conference at The Studio in Manchester, starting mid-morning on Monday 11 September 2023, finishing mid-afternoon on Tuesday 12 September 2023. Save the dates! And it will be a hybrid conference, so people can attend in person or online.

I am delighted that my first choices of speakers have agreed to give the keynote each day: highly experienced and creative experts Pam Burnard for Day 1, and Caroline Lenette for Day 2.

If you are interested in contributing to the conference, you can download the call for contributions here . The deadline for proposals is 1 December 2022, and all the details you need should be on the call, including an email address for any queries you may have.

I am so excited about this project! It has been such a struggle to keep it secret; I am delighted I can tell the world at last. Please help me pass the word around – and I hope you can join us in September of next year.

Bake Your PhD

I can’t figure out where this started but it hasn’t been around for long and it’s not yet happening in many places. Bake Your PhD is embedded as an annual competition at the Australian National University and at the University of Southampton in England . Bake Your Thesis takes place at Memorial University in Canada and at Otago University in New Zealand . Bake Your Research is happening at Dublin City University in Ireland , and at Warwick University in England . The Twitter hashtags #BakeYourPhD, #BakeYourThesis and #BakeYourResearch show evidence of lots of other universities joining in, with some scrumptious-looking pictures.

So now we have Dance Your PhD and Bake Your PhD (or Thesis, or Research). What next? Sculpt Your Inbox? Weave Your Ethics Approval Application? Climb Your Admin Mountain?

It’s easy to take the mickey but there is a serious point to all of this creativity: to make academic work more accessible. Holly Neill , from Ulster University in Northern Ireland, expressed this beautifully in a tweet:

One benefit of entering the ‘Bake Your PhD’ competition was that my dad now seems to have a *slightly* better understanding of what my PhD is all about! 🧁 Well done to all at @UlsterUniPhD especially the organisers who did such a fab job! A really impressive day! 👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/1zEgqmVLUH — Holly Neill (@HollyRNeill) April 9, 2019

I’m sure there will be many offshoots of, or alternatives to, dancing and baking. Yet I think baking will be hard to beat, as cake is both attractive and edible – what more could anyone ask?!

This blog, and the monthly #CRMethodsChat on Twitter, is funded by my beloved patrons . It takes me at least one working day per month to post here each week and run the Twitterchat. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding from Patrons of $44 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $44 – you can help ! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Creative Research Methods chat on Twitter

But, I hear you asking, Helen, what is the new hashtag? In fact there are two: #crmethods , which we can use for general discussion on the topic in between the monthly chats, and #crmethodschat for the actual chat itself. These hashtags have not yet been used on Twitter.

There’s another new hashtag which may be of interest to some readers: #alt_dissertations which was started by @balloonleap . It’s certainly of interest to me; as regular readers will know, I’ve written some posts on creative dissertation and thesis writing , and I’m hoping the hashtag will help me write more in future.

If you’re not on Twitter, maybe sign up and give it a try? Unless you’re in a country where it’s blocked, in which case, I’m sorry but you won’t be able to join in with the chats. However, I plan to make a Wakelet of each chat, which will have a non-Twitter URL, so I hope you will at least be able to follow along. And of course this will also be useful for people who can’t make the date/time of any given chat.

So, are you going to join me in a few hours’ time? I’m excited to see who will be there! Or, if you can’t make it and want notification of the Wakelet URL, please leave your Twitter ID (or, if you don’t have one, your email address) in the comments below.

This blog, and the Twitterchat, are funded by my beloved patrons . It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $34 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $34 – you can help ! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Getting Creative with your Thesis or Dissertation #3

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.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons . It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $12 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $12 – you can help ! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also support for a single month if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Why Research Participants Rock

I love to work with screenplay writing. I use play script writing too, sometimes, though less often. With play script writing, you’re bound by theatre rules, so everything has to happen in one room, with minimal special effects. This can be really helpful when you’re researching something that happens in a specific place such as a parent and toddler group or a team sport. Screenplay, though, is more flexible: you can cut from private to public space, or include an army of mermaids if you wish. Also, screenplay writing offers more scope for descriptions of settings and characters, which, from a researcher’s point of view, can provide very useful data.

Especially when participants do their own thing! Our screenplay-writing participants largely ignored our suggestions about interactions between students and lecturers. Instead, we learned about a south Asian woman, the first in her family to go to university, who was lonely, isolated, and struggling to cope. We found out about a non-binary student’s experience of homophobia, sexism and violence in different places on campus. We saw how difficult it can be for Muslim students to join in with student life when alcohol plays a central role. Scenes like these gave us a much richer picture of facets of student inclusion and exclusion than we would have had if our participants had kept to their brief.

Other researchers using creative techniques have found this too. For example, Shamser Sinha and Les Back did collaborative research with young migrants in London. One participant, who they call Dorothy, wanted to use a camera, but wasn’t sure what to capture. Sinha suggested exploring how her immigration status affected where she went and what she could buy. Instead, Dorothy went sightseeing, and took pictures of Buckingham Palace. The stories she told about what this place and experience meant to her enriched the researchers’ perceptions of migrant life, not just the ‘aggrieved’ life they were initially interested in, but ‘her free life’ ( Sinha and Back 2013 :483).

Katy Vigurs aimed to use photo-elicitation to explore different generations’ perceptions of the English village where they lived. She worked with a ladies’ choir, a running club, and a youth project. Vigurs asked her participants to take pictures that would show how they saw and experienced their community. The runners did as she asked. The singers, who were older, took a few photos and also, unprompted, provided old photographs of village events and landmarks, old and new newspaper cuttings, photocopied and hand-drawn maps of the area with added annotations, and long written narratives about their perceptions and experiences of the village. The young people also took some photos, mostly of each other, but then spent a couple of hours with a map of the village, tracing the routes they used and talking with the researcher about where and how they spent time. Rather than standard photo-elicitation, this became ‘co-created mixed-media elicitation’ as Vigurs puts it ( Vigurs and Kara 2016 :520) (yes, I am the second author of this article, but all the research and much of the writing is hers). Again, this provided insights for the researcher that she could not have found using the method she originally planned.

Research ethics committees might frown on this level of flexibility. I would argue that it is more ethical than the traditional prescriptive approach to research. Our participants have knowledge and ideas and creativity to share. They don’t need us to teach them how to interact and work with others. In fact, our participants have a great deal to teach us, if we are only willing to listen and learn.

Creative Research In Practice

The research question was: How can QMUL improve students’ experience with respect to the inclusivity of their teaching, learning, and curricula? The original brief focused on the protected characteristics covered by the UK Equality Act 2010: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, and sexual orientation. Roxanne and I advised QMUL to take a more holistic approach to inclusivity, as the protected characteristics don’t cover some factors that we know can lead to discrimination and disadvantage, such as socioeconomic status and caring responsibilities. We recommended Appreciative Inquiry as a methodological framework, because it doesn’t start from a deficit perspective emphasising problems and complaints, but focuses on what an organisation does well and what it could do better. (It doesn’t ignore or sideline problems and complaints, either; it simply starts from the standpoint that there are assets to build on.)  And of course we suggested creative techniques, particularly for data-gathering and sense-making, alongside more conventional methods.

Roxanne and I were both keen to do this piece of work because we share an interest in diversity and inclusion. Neither of us had worked with QMUL before and we weren’t sure whether they would appreciate our approach to their brief. Sometimes commissioners want to recruit people who will do exactly what they specify. Even so, I’d rather say how I think a piece of work needs to be done; if the commissioner doesn’t want it done that way, then I don’t want the job.

QMUL shortlisted six sets of applicants. The interview was rigorous. Roxanne and I came out feeling we’d done ourselves justice, but with no clue as to whether we might have got the work or not. But we did!

The research was overseen by a Task & Finish group, made up of staff from different departments, who approved the methods we had put forward. We conducted a targeted literature review to identify key issues and best practice for inclusivity in the UK and overseas, and set the research in an institutional, societal, and theoretical context. The theoretical perspectives we used began with the theory of intersectionality developed by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, which we then built on using the diffraction methodology of the physicist and social theorist Karen Barad. These two theories together provided a binocular lens for looking at a very complex phenomenon.

The timescale for the research was tight, and data gathering collided with Ramadan, exams, and the summer holidays. So, not surprisingly, we struggled with recruitment, despite strenuous efforts by us and by helpful colleagues at QMUL. We were able to involve 17 staff and 22 students from a wide range of departments. We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with the staff, and gave students the option of participating in face-to-face interviews or group discussions using creative methods. These methods included:

• The life-sized lecturer: an outline figure on a large sheet of paper, with a label indicating what kind of person they are e.g. ‘a typical QMUL lecturer’ and ‘an ideally inclusive lecturer’, which students could write and draw on.
• Sticker maps: a map of organisational inclusivity, which we developed for QMUL, on which students could place small green stickers to indicate areas of good practice and small red stickers to indicate areas for further improvement.
• Empathy maps: tools to help participants consider how other students or staff in different situations think and feel; what they might see, say, and do; and where they might experience ‘pain or gain’ with respect to inclusive learning.
• Screenplay writing: a very short screenplay depicting an interaction between a student and a very inclusive lecturer, or between a student and a less inclusive lecturer. The screenplay will include dialogue and may also include information about characters’ attributes, the setting, and so on.

We generated over 50,000 words of data, which we imported into NVivo. Roxanne and I spent a day working together on emergent data coding, discussing excerpts from different interviews and group sessions, with the aim of extracting maximum richness. Then I finished the coding and carried out a thematic analysis while Roxanne finished the literature review.

We wrote a draft report, and then had two ‘review and refine’ meetings for sense-making, which were attended by 24 people. The first meeting was with members of the Task & Finish group, and the second was an open meeting, for participants and other interested people. We presented the draft findings, and put up sheets on the walls listing 37 key factors identified in the draft report. We gave participants three sticky stars to use to indicate their top priorities, and 10 sticky dots to use to indicate where they would allocate resources. People took the resource allocation incredibly seriously, and it was interesting to see how collaboratively they worked on this. I heard people saying things like, ‘That’s important, but it’s already got five dots on, so I’m going to put another one here.’ I wish I could have recorded all their conversations! We did collect some further data at these meetings, including touch-typed notes of group discussions and information about the relative frequency of occurrence, and importance, of the 37 key factors. All of this data was synthesised together with the previously collected data in the final report and its recommendations.

The comparatively small number of participants was a limitation, though we did include people from all faculties and most schools, and we certainly collected enough data for a solid qualitative study. We would have liked some quantitative data too, but the real limitation was that most of the people we reached were already concerned about inclusivity. We didn’t reach enough people to be able to say with certainty whether this was, or was not, the case more widely at QMUL. Also, while none of our participants disagreed unduly with our methodology or methods, others at QMUL may have done so. In a university including physicists, mathematicians, engineers, social scientists, artists, doctors, dentists and lawyers, among others, it seems highly unlikely that anyone could come up with an approach to research that would receive universal approval.

Yet I’m proud of this research. It’s not perfect – for example, I’ve realised, in the course of writing this blog post, that we didn’t explicitly include the research question in the research report! But its title is Inclusive Curricula, Teaching, and Learning: Adaptive Strategies for Inclusivity , which seems clear enough. I’m sure there are other ways it could be improved. But I’m really happy with the central features: the methodology, the methods, and the flexibility Roxanne and I offered to our client.

How to evaluate excellence in arts-based research

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 .

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.

The Importance Of Creative Research Methods

On the first two mornings we were lucky enough to get to work in the theatre’s auditorium, a wonderful space with plenty of room to move around and interact with people in all sorts of ways. On the first day we used pipecleaners to model journeys both literal and metaphorical, and on the second day we explored issues of power in research using Open Space Technology .

For the first two afternoons, we crossed the car park to the theatre’s Workspace rehearsal room, another great space – with a balcony! On the first afternoon we learned about cultural animation , used buttons to create community maps, then added frames and artefacts to help us come up with research questions. Then we devised and performed creative group presentations – that was so much fun! On the second afternoon we mapped pathways through participation in universities, using flip chart paper, coloured Post-It notes and pens, pipecleaners and tape – by now the creative juices were really flowing.

On the third day we were at the beautiful Keele campus , where (as it was a Saturday) we could use some of the university’s technology facilities: the KAVE for virtual reality and gaming, the Claus Moser studio for soundscapes, and the Turing Lab to make digital circuits. In the afternoon we focused on creative academic writing, hearing about ethnography as advocacy for the animals who are often invisible in social research, and geopoetics , before doing a geopoetics exercise.

We crammed in a great deal, yet there was so much else we could have included. Perhaps the richest part of the summer school was its discussions: between any two people, or a group, or all of us together. I was delighted and astonished by the calibre of the students: an enormously intelligent, creative, dynamic bunch; it was an honour to spend three days in their company.

I love to teach creative research methods, and I’m looking forward to my next gig this Friday at LSE for the National Centre for Research Methods (fully booked I’m afraid). I find a lot of my teaching involves giving people permission to work creatively – or perhaps enabling them to give themselves permission – and advising people on how to convince supervisors and ethics committees that it is legitimate to take a creative approach to research. There is a long hard fight ahead to convince people in certain quarters that useful knowledge exists beyond the bounds of academic convention. In this fight, we are on the same side as Indigenous researchers around the world who find their methodologies are sidelined or ridiculed by the academy. Anishnabe researcher Kathy Absolon, in conversation with Plains Cree and Salteaux researcher Margaret Kovach, said this:

If you go on a water walk or quest, that is your methodology. I was reflecting when you were talking about yours [methodology]. If I said I am doing my PhD and my methodology is my dreams, and I am going to go on a fast every year, and after that fast I had somebody come and visit me and talk to me about my fast and take [teachings] with them. I wouldn’t propose that because I wouldn’t want that to [be] measured. I know that is Indigenous methodologies, but I wouldn’t propose it as a methodology within a mainstream setting because I don’t want them to have the power to say that that’s not research. But it is. (Absolon in Kovach 2009 :152-3)

There is a parallel here with creative research in the Euro-Western paradigm, where supervisors, ethics committees, journal editors and reviewers, and others have the power to say ‘this is not research’ to people who know perfectly well that their textile art, ice-skating, or poetry, is indeed research. Patricia Leavy has written eloquently of ‘the ache of false separation’ that some people feel when required to keep their art separate from their research work (2010:240).

Some people have said to me that one reason I can write the books I write is that I’m not an academic. As an independent researcher, I have much less power than many academics, in many ways. But I do have the power to say ‘this is research’, and to collect the evidence that this is research, and put it in a scholarly book, so that other people can cite that work, which helps to convince doubting/frightened/threatened supervisors and others. And I will stand with Indigenous researchers, though their methods are not my methods, because I recognise that knowledge comes from more places and in more ways in this complex and beautiful world than those I can access myself.

Still it feels lonely sometimes. So having the opportunity to spend three days with a group of lively-minded people, who are not only open to this but engaging with it, excited by it, and pushing its boundaries in fascinating ways, was an absolute delight.

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