AESTHETIC FORMS OF DATA REPRESENTATION IN QUALITATIVE FAMILY THERAPY RESEARCH

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Jan 2005 by Piercy, Fred P, Benson, Kristen

These standards for alternative, aesthetic ways to represent qualitative research are evolving. The researcher, however, is still responsible for producing and representing credible data. According to Bruscia (1998), "Researchers have to hold themselves accountable not only to the scholarly community, but to themselves, the phenomena, the participants, and all other parties involved in the study" (p. 193).

THE FIT OF CRITERIA TO THEORY AND PURPOSE

There are many forms of qualitative research. Patton (2002) emphasized that criteria for judging qualitative research should flow logically from the theoretical underpinnings and purposes of that research. For example, qualitative researchers who hold to a more realist theoretical orientation (i.e., reality can be captured) detail elaborate methods for assuring the reliability and validity of their data (e.g., triangulation, audit trails, member checks, etc.). Social-constructionist researchers, in contrast, are more interested in interpretive methods and in assuring that their interpretations are credible and trustworthy. Critical theorists, such as feminist family therapy researchers, use research methods to critique society, raise consciousness, and bring about change. Qualitative researchers committed to the use of art, music, creative writing, and performance value affective knowing as well as intellectual knowing, art as well as science (Patton, 2002). According to Patton (2002), "Artistic criteria focus on aesthetics, creativity, interpretive vitality, and expressive voice" (p. 548). The credibility of findings takes on a feeling dimension. For example, Ensler (2001) based The Vagina Monologues, her one-woman play, on over 200 interviews with women about their vaginas. She presented their words as theater, and the result is a moving production that audiences relate to on a variety of levels. Although one could certainly debate whether The Vagina Monologues should be considered qualitative research, few would deny the power of its performance. Similarly powerful is The Laramie Project (HBO Films, 2002), about the killing of Mathew Shepherd, a gay male from Laramie, Wyoming, which is also based on interviews, but presented as theater. The "truth" value of these productions relates as much to the audiences' affective reaction to the participants' stories as to the intellectual understanding of them. And both have a powerful believability.

It is important, then, for qualitative researchers who use artistic forms of data representation to be clear about their purpose and theoretical orientations so that others do not judge their work by criteria better applied to a different type of research. For this reason, some mention in the methods section of the researcher's paper would help the editor and/or reader to have the appropriate lens on when judging the research. For example, Ricci (2003) clarifies the intent of his poem about growing up in two cultures this way:

Ethnography, by its simplest definition, is the practice of attempting to discover the culture of others (Patton, 2002). Autoethnography, then, must be the practice of attempting to discover the culture of self, or of others through self. (p. 4)