Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Purposes of Arts-Based Research Studies

Various proponents and advocates describe the primary purpose of engaging in arts-based forms of social and educational research in slightly different ways. In general, arts-based research texts reveal previously unattended-to aspects of social and cultural phenomena, or allow readers and viewers to vicariously experience those phenomena from an otherwise unavailable vantage point. This “reexperiencing” of facets of the social world may serve to problematize the value of commonsensical, orthodox ways of viewing the world in the minds of research audiences, producing doubt, disequilibrium, or skepticism toward dominant meanings habitually associated with social and cultural phenomena. Research with a heuristic ...