QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN

After you have defined your research questions, aims, or goals, the next step is to identify your research design. Your research questions or goals inform the type of research design that you will use. There are some research designs that are informed by a particular field of study and expanded to other settings and disciplines. Other research designs are informed by theory.

Arts-based and Arts-informed Designs

What is it? There are two options that you can use when you are considering a qualitative project that consists of the arts: arts-based and arts-informed designs. In this context, the arts represent diverse forms of creative expression, such as, dance, drama, music, writing, and visual art.

Arts-based research consists of when one or more forms of art are used as the central focus of a topic. It is the dual exploration of the process of creating and expressing different forms of the arts by participants and the researcher. An example of this may be the experiences of an artist-in-residence at a psychiatric hospital who paints in the presence of or with hospital patients.

Arts-informed research is the inclusion of one or more artistic forms that is not the main focus of the topic, but it is a method of inquiry on a topic. Similar to arts-based, arts-informed research could include the researcher’s self-reflection. Researchers who undertake this method focus on the aesthetic ways to highlight information on a research project to make it accessible in non-academic settings.

You may be interested in exploring some form of creative expression or complement other types of data with information that can be experienced through creative forms. This type of information collected through arts-based and arts-informed designs may be different from the traditional verbal data found in interviews and focus groups; however, it could provide rich information that you cannot gather from verbal data. Our consultants can offer hands-on and technical support if you are interested in arts-based and arts-informed designs for your project.

How can we help you?

• Differentiate between conducting arts-based and arts-informed research
• Assist in using appropriate language applicable to your type of research in the arts
• Provide guidance on how to analyze and interpret data from the arts

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