Merriman, Brian & Guerin, Suzanne (2006). Children's drawings in child-centered research.
This week’s reading opens my mind about using children’s drawings as an effective research tool. In this article, drawings is used as data to support child-centred research. This paper also facilitates a discussion on the strengths and weakness of using drawing as a research tool. To further illustrate the benefits of using drawings, the authors used a case study in exploring career aspiration of 151 Street Children from Kolkata, India. Children were invited to draw a picture reflecting what person they want to become in the future.
Using drawings as data allows children to participate in the research in a fun and relaxing environment where in comparison, interviews may seem to be intimidating for children. It also allows children to express their opinions and feelings with no or minimum literacy skills. This is a very important point as children have been underrepresented through traditional research methods including interviews or questionnaires. Moreover, drawings proposes new ideas in cross-cultural research because it can overcome issues in other methods such as linguistic challenges in translation. Furthermore, the accuracy and quality of the data collected from drawings is supported by conducting qualitative and quantitative coding and analysis.
In comparison with other approaches such as interviews or questionnaires, the drawings does not offer direct data for researchers to analyze. Interviews or questionnaires may contain close-end questions which could result in a more limited scope or biased research results. On the other hand, researchers may be challenged to maintain their neutrality in their findings as drawing interpretation may be subject to each researcher.
Using drawings as data allows children to participate in the research in a fun and relaxing environment where in comparison, interviews may seem to be intimidating for children. It also allows children to express their opinions and feelings with no or minimum literacy skills. This is a very important point as children have been underrepresented through traditional research methods including interviews or questionnaires. Moreover, drawings proposes new ideas in cross-cultural research because it can overcome issues in other methods such as linguistic challenges in translation. Furthermore, the accuracy and quality of the data collected from drawings is supported by conducting qualitative and quantitative coding and analysis.
In comparison with other approaches such as interviews or questionnaires, the drawings does not offer direct data for researchers to analyze. Interviews or questionnaires may contain close-end questions which could result in a more limited scope or biased research results. On the other hand, researchers may be challenged to maintain their neutrality in their findings as drawing interpretation may be subject to each researcher.
Hui,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting point about the cross-cultural benefits of drawings in affording those with different linguistic skills to communicate through images. This connects to a reading I just finished for another course I'm taking on Multimodalities. The article by Maureen Kendrick (UBC Professor) details how children in Uganda were asked to visually represent their support networks through drawings in one instance, and to draw their literacy practices or how they see themselves in relation to literacy. The drawings yielded results in understanding children's views of themselves in relation to power, agency and their perceived access to support. The researchers were in the room as the children created this visuals and also noted the time it took for two participants to represent their web of support systems. This alone afforded the researchers with information.
I agree with you about the need to maintain neutrality as a researcher in the interpretation of the drawings. As each individual brings their own 'funds of knowledge' and biases to a project, it is crucial that multiple interpretations of the data are analyzed for validity.
I'm always fascinated by how children choose to represent the world around them through drawings, and what these drawings sometimes reveal to the viewer that may be implicit rather than explicitly stated.
Hi Hui. Using drawing certainly is a refreshing way to do research with children at the centre. More importantly it's fun for them. I agree with you that as the data is personal and raw, it completely relies on the researcher to interpret. Perhaps a follow up interview and more background information gathering would help maintain the neutrality?
ReplyDeleteGreat discussion! You might also think about the drawings as focal objects to spark conversation and dialogue — among participants, with researchers , etc.
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