Exploring provocation as a research method in the social sciences

Abstract

This paper explores provocation as an approach towards social science research. While routinely used in natural science and arts research, this paper argues provocation might enable the social science researcher to initiate critical reflection amongst participants on issues that are often otherwise overlooked, obscured or accepted as naturalised practice. By assuming the role of provocateur, stimulator and/or agitator, the social science researcher can interrupt the flow of everyday life in order to illuminate and draw attention to complex social issues. Using research interventions that embrace, rather than deny, the socially constructed nature of the research process, provocation provides an alternative to largely non-obtrusive methods favoured in much social science research. This paper concludes by outlining the practical and methodological issues associated with this approach – in particular the complicated ethics of provoking reflection on topics that might not have otherwise come to the participant’s attention.     

Mandalas as a visual research method for understanding primary care for depression

Depression is a complex problem, commonly but not always successfully managed in primary care. We know relatively little about the system of primary care for depression particularly at the level of organisations. In this paper, we describe the use of mandalas as a visual data collection method within an in-depth programme of participatory action research undertaken in six primary care organisations in Victoria, Australia. We draw on mandala images, selected and discussed by 49 multidisciplinary primary health care professionals and demonstrate how they can be employed as an effective graphic elicitation method. We conclude that mandalas offer an innovative approach for qualitative data collection for two reasons. First, they can engage busy research participants in a reflective space. Second, using the mandalas as an elicitation method generates meaningful data: it provides new insights, reveals unrecognised aspects of practice, generates new learning, gives physical form to tacit processes and enables complex information to become accessible; all within short timeframes.     

Using creative methods to research across difference. An introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

This special issue explores some of the methodological challenges that are brought into play when scholars deploy creative methods to research across difference. This introductory article defines what we mean by ‘creative methods’ and discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of using this approach within social science research. It then outlines how creative methods can be used to research across difference, specifically, and introduces the seven articles that make up the special issue.     

A Cultural Exploration Based on Structured Observational Methods in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study contributes to the debate on applying parenting style typologies to the Chinese population by using structured observational methods in examining parenting behaviors and styles in parent-child interactions in problem-solving situations. Participants were 81 parent-child dyads in Hong Kong. The four parenting groups identified through cluster analysis were authoritative, authoritarian, disengaged, and task-oriented. This clustering was compared internally on parenting attributes and child's school-related outcomes, as well as externally with the Parent Behavior Report typology assessed through the child-report method. Discussion was based on the conceptual and theoretical implications of this new clustering using observational methods.     

On the relation between ‘visual research methods’ and contemporary visual culture

One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials. It is often suggested that this growth is somehow related to the increasing importance of visual images in contemporary social and cultural practice. However, the form of the relationship between ‘visual research methods’ and ‘contemporary visual culture’ has not yet been interrogated. This paper conducts such an interrogation, exploring the relation between ‘visual research methods’ – as they are constituted in quite particular ways by a growing number of handbooks, reviews, conference and journals – and contemporary visual culture – as characterized by discussions of ‘convergence culture’. The paper adopts a performative approach to ‘visual research methods’. It suggests that when they are used, ‘visual research methods’ create neither a ‘social’ articulated through culturally mediated images, nor a ‘research participant’ competency in using such images. Instead, the paper argues that the intersection of visual culture and ‘visual research methods’ should be located in their shared way of using images, since in both, images tend to be deployed much more as communicational tools than as representational texts. The paper concludes by placing this argument in the context of recent discussions about the production of sociological knowledge in the wider social field.     

Confidence and the effectiveness of creative methods in qualitative interviews with adults

ABSTRACT

This paper examines two contrasting creative methods; a drawing task and a LEGO building task used in a study exploring the gap between policy and practice in widening participation to higher education across two different types of university in England. These creative methods were used within 16 semi-structured interviews in seven universities to attempt to explore deeper understandings of everyday policy and what they mean in practice and to make comparisons across types of institutions. This paper examines the role that creative confidence played in the effectiveness of both methods through exploring the successes and failures of each arguing that understanding these barriers can improve the successful use of these methods, especially with adults. When these barriers are overcome, the paper also demonstrates how creative methods encouraged more reflective discussion of everyday issues, increased levels of rapport, and shared engagement in the interview process.     

Advancing towards inclusive social research: visual methods as opportunities for people with severe mental illness to participate in research

This article explores the possibilities offered by visual methods in the move towards inclusive research, reviewing some methodological implications of said research and reflecting on the potential of visual methods to meet these methodological requirements. A study into the impact of work on social inclusion and the social relationships of people suffering from severe mental illness (SMI) serves to illustrate the use of visual methods such as photo elicitation and graphic elicitation in the context of in-depth interviews with the aim of improving the aforementioned target group’s participation in research, participation understood as one of the basic elements of inclusive approaches. On the basis of this study, we reflect on the potential of visual methods to improve the inclusive approach to research and conclude that these methods are open and flexible in awarding participantsa voice, allowingpeople with SMI to express their needs, and therefore adding value to said approach.     

Research With Deaf Children and Not on Them: A Study of Method and Process

This study addresses the design requirements and innovative data collection methods for a study that aimed to be deaf‐centred and child‐friendly. The approach was created for a 6‐year longitudinal study of Sign Bilingual education from the perspective of eight deaf children who were educated using that approach from 9/10 to 15/16 years old. The research question was: ‘From the deaf child's perspective, what are the experiences, advantages and disadvantages of Sign Bilingual education?' This study will discuss the methods developed for the first element of the study when the children were 9/10 years old, using six interactive weekly workshops. These included video diaries, photography, peer interviewing, drawing, poster making and group discussion. The appropriateness for and adaptations made with respect to signing deaf children are discussed as well as the wider significance of this approach for children's research in general.     

Children's Pictures of a Good and Desirable Meal in Kindergarten — A Participatory Visual Approach

In kindergarten, meals are framed and regulated by the adults and ideas within the institution. However, by inviting children to visualise their ideas, they can be included when trying to understand as well as develop the meals. The purpose was to explore children's pictures of good and desirable meals in kindergarten by using a visual, participatory approach together with children four to six years. The children related to various aspects of the meal, emphasising the importance of food, table artefacts and context, defined as platescape, tablescape and roomscape. The result further highlighted the complexity of listening to the plurality of children's voices.     

Community-based arts research for people with learning disabilities: challenging misconceptions about learning disabilities

This article presents some of the community-based artwork of a group of men with learning disabilities, who aimed to challenge some of the misconceptions associated with learning disabilities. People with learning disabilities regularly face many forms of direct and indirect stigma. The consequences of such negative perceptions may affect individuals’ social relationships and ensure that barriers are strengthened which prevent their full inclusion. The men in this project used a series of visual and creative methods to challenge some of these misconceptions by telling stories through art, demonstrating skill through photography, using poetry to talk about sexual identity and improvising drama and filmmaking to challenge stigma, and through sculpture expressed their voices. Thus, by doing so, they were able to challenge some of the stigma associated with learning disabilities, indicating that community-based arts research is a valuable way in which to promote the voices of people with learning disabilities.     

城市色彩规划的广州样本研究

以广州城市色彩环境为例,在大量实地调研的基础上,阐述广州城市色彩的主要构成因素及其色彩特征,对建立属于广州的城市色彩体系提出城市色彩规划策略建议,并提出以城市色彩结构特征为内在依据的色彩规划策略建议。     

将兴趣引入到教学中去——高职船体识图与制图教学方法改革与探索

在新的高职教育模式下,高职院校的船体识图与制图课程教学必然要进行相应的改罩。本文通过结合船体识图与制图的课程特点及高职教育学校的生源特点,在专业课程船体识图与制图的教学上采用一系列教学方法激发学生的学习兴趣,从而提高船舶工程技术专业课的教学效果。     

Digital Sociology: Emergent Technologies in the Field and the Classroom

In this essay, I use my own research experiences to address a critical intersection between technology and sociology. I suggest that thinking reflexively about technology might enhance both how sociologists do research and how they teach about it.     

(Micro)mobility,disability and resilience: exploring well-being among youth with physical disabilities

This paper explores the daily (micro)mobilities that youth with a visual or auditory impairment use to sustain well-being. Geographical research suggests that mobility is a universal phenomenon referred to the capacity to navigate one’s way through different spaces and places. Using a qualitative cross-cultural, visual methods approach to research with vulnerable youth, including four participants with visual or auditory impairments, we demonstrate that everyday patterns of (micro)mobilities through the youth’s home, school and community help disabled youth create pathways to resilience. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to services that promote resilience against ableist beliefs.     

Benda Bilili – ‘look beyond the images’: representations and visual narratives of disability in Kinshasa

In this article we address a number of visual narratives that represent physical disability in Kinshasa, D.R. Congo. Drawing on visual material that was collected before and during anthropological fieldwork (between 2010 and 2014) we offer an insight into the interrelation between representations and physical disability within a Congolese context, as represented in four documentaries. The text briefly reflects on representations of the ‘Other’ and wants to add a reflection on representations of disability that originate from an African urban context. Our examples are complemented with in situ analyses derived from fieldwork that question how particular narratives portray disability and dis(en)ablement within a Congolese socio-cultural context. Thus we invite to look beyond the images. Finally, the article adds a critical reflection about these visual narratives as dis/enabling through their specific construction of dis-ability.     

Eliciting Street-Based Sex Worker Perspectives to Inform Prostitution Policy Development

Using a visual method developed with input from program participants, this study reports on data collected from people attending a Baltimore drop-in center for women in street-based sex work (N = 17). Respondents created collages expressing future hopes and aspirations, which they discussed in focus groups and interviews. Respondents focused on health, reunification with family, employment and housing. Although respondents’ easily visualized goals, they often seemed out of reach. Hurdles that they noted were largely due to poverty and lack of opportunities. Our findings highlight the negative impact of prostitution policy on women’s choices and their ability to achieve self-identified goals.     

‘Weightless?’: disrupting relations of power in/through photographic imagery of persons with intellectual disabilities

Missing in discussions of visual representations of people with intellectual disabilities are their own perspectives. Rooted in Derrida’s concern with the ‘right of inspection’ over visual representations, participatory arts-informed methodologies were used in research with people with intellectual disabilities. They critiqued and then used Photoshop to transform public photographs of labeled people. Responding to visual constructions of labeled persons as ‘weightless’/powerless, they revealed personal experiences of being denied control over their lives and representations. Yet their critiques and transformations reveal possibilities for their re-conceptualization as powerful, subverting stereotypes of labeled people and disrupting relations of power in disability imagery.     

Resisting sexism and speciesism in the social sciences: Using feminist,species‐inclusive,visual methods to value the work of women and (other) animals

Visual methods offer social scientists some promising possibilities for valuing the work of women and animals in domestic homes and formal organizations, such as schools, hospitals, residential care facilities and other workplaces. In this article, we consider how visual methods might be used to ‘put women and animals in the frame’. We draw data and inspiration from our What is it About Animals study [2015–2016], which involved an online call for people over 16 years of age, to post pictures, poems, stories and videos depicting what animals mean to them. We pay attention to attempts to resist sexism and speciesism in the valuing of work, including emotional labour. We consider the possibility of post‐humanist methods for animal subject‐hood, and a sociology of animals, emotions and work. We end with a discussion of possible future visual methods projects to value the work of women and (other) animals.