Writing and performance strategies for qualitative researchers

By Charles Vanover, University of South Florida, USA and Paul Mihas, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

In this guest blog post by August 2021 SAGE Methodspace Mentors-in-Residence, Charles Vanover and Paul Mihas, the two discuss video from a symposium on how to write up and communicate research to the public and other researchers. Texas Woman’s College’s Jessica Gullion discusses how to use qualitative research in blog posts, opinion pieces, and concept papers. Arizona State University’s Johnny Saldaña describes how to transform qualitative research into ethnodrama and other forms of performance. Aishath Nasheeda, Villa College, Maldives, discusses how to transform interview transcripts into stories. UC Berkeley and Scholarly Roadside Service’s Mitch Allen and Carleton University’s Sophia Tomas discuss how to transform a qualitative study into a published monograph. These presentations are part of a session recorded at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), on Saturday May 22, 2021.

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Qualitative researchers rarely work in laboratories. Most do their research outside the university in communities and in institutions serving the public. Writing up the events that occur in these settings poses an enormous number of technical and ethical challenges to field-based researchers. It is fairly straightforward to report the findings of an experiment or a survey analysis; it is anything but simple to report on how other people live their lives within the complexity of modern life and professional practice (see Benner, Hooper-Kyriakidis, Kyriakidis, & Stannard, 2011; Biklen, 1995; Bourgois, 2003; Jackall, 1988; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

Ethical research practice demands researchers give something back to the people and institutions they investigate: this obligation includes developing ways to communicate findings from the investigation to the community members who participated in the research as well as developing content accessible to people touched by a particular problem. Peer reviewed journal articles are rarely the best form for engaging in such work (Gullion, 2022). Few members of the public-at-large have access to scholarly materials locked behind pay-walls and few non-academics have the knowledge to comprehend such works, even if they did have access

Writing up the data is a mean of discovery and inquiry

Communicating research findings, however, should never be thought of as something to be left for the final stage of the inquiry. Time and resources for write-up and other communications practices should be threaded into the research design and organized as part of the data analysis process. As Mihas (2022) emphasizes, writing up the data is a means of discovery and inquiry.

Qualitative researchers do more than “write up” their findings, they write through and toward discovery. As a practice, not simply a phase at the eleventh hour, the work of writing and rewriting continually activates knowledge and channels growing comprehension (p. 411).

Thus, for qualitative researchers, the obligation to communicate findings to other researchers and to the public becomes an opportunity to engage with data and continue to develop meaning from their inquiry. As Richardson (2000) emphasizes, writing is a method of knowing. Every attempt to transform data into text--whether in memos, blog posts, or book chapters—provides opportunities for qualitative researchers to gain new insights.

Writing text is not the only way to develop these understandings. Across his career, Johnny Saldaña has emphasized the importance of alternate modes of research communication, such as ethnodrama and dance (Saldaña, 2011, 2018, 2005). The arts are a powerful means to analyze data and communicate with the public. Drawing the data is a powerful tool to write for discovery (Galman, 2022). Rehearsing a verbatim script might create more insight than coding the data. People who would never read the book or download the article might be willing to see and, perhaps, become transformed by the ethnodrama or show. Even if the work is not of professional quality, the researcher, and others, might learn from the effort.

International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

This blogpost discusses advice shared on how to communicate research shared during a set of talks given by the contributors of a new book from SAGE, Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research: After the Interview (Vanover, Mihas, & Saldaña, 2022) recorded at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), on Saturday May 22, 2021. Texas Women College’s Dr. Jessica Gullion provides a set of how-to’s for simplifying research communications to allow findings to be understood by broad audiences. Arizona State University’s Johnny Saldaña discusses how to transform research into scripts for performance. Aishath Nasheeda, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Villa College, Maldives, discusses a core practice of qualitative research: the work required to transform oral speech into a focused, written narrative. Mitch Allen, of Scholarly Roadside Service, and Sophia Tamas, of Carleton University, discuss the negotiations between authors and publishers that produce a published book. Readers are welcome to engage with our written discussion of this symposium or go directly to the bottom of the page and click on video from the session.

Jessica Gullion discusses the importance and challenges of communicating with the public. Rather than producing knowledge for an elite audience, qualitative researchers must also work to create information for ordinary citizens whose lives are shaped by the social forces researchers investigate. If qualitative researchers study the lives of people who have been harmed by gun violence or if they interview people who lost their homes or livelihoods due to natural disasters, researchers have an obligation to communicate their findings to the people whose traumas they recorded. Qualitative researchers must write to the public and make their findings available to the people whose lives they studied. Responding to this ethical obligation creates a professional benefit. When researchers write for the public, their work might be downloaded tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times. Jessica’s op-ed piece on gun violence went viral, and it has been read by hundreds of thousands of people (Gullion, 2022).

Perhaps the most important rule for writing for the public is also the simplest and most difficult to achieve. Researchers must get to the point, and tell people what their study means. Jessica emphasizes members of the public do not have time for fancy literature reviews; people demand researchers write clearly and communicate why their work is relevant, right now. Given the average American reads at a 6th grade level, it is challenging for researchers to write such clear and simple texts. Researchers must learn how to communicate without jargon and without, for laypeople, mystifying academic content—such as discussions of epistemology.

Communicating with the public

At ICQI 2021, Jessica provides step-by-step advice for developing pieces such as opinion pieces and concept papers. She also discusses how to write the query letters necessary to get this type of work published. During the conclusion of her talk, Jessica discusses the dark side of going public. She discusses the fallout when a piece goes viral and the author — the researcher — is attacked online. Authors should be prepared for, and have a plan in place to manage “trolls,” hate mail, and even threats of physical harm. Jessica concludes her talk by emphasizing one of the benefits of going public. Along with the trolls, her public writing has touched the lives of thousands of people across the nation and the world.  

Dramatizing interviews

Johnny Saldaña shares a step-by-step process for transforming research into performances to communicate to wide audiences (Saldaña, 2022). Johnny begins his talk by arguing there are three major purposes for dramatizing an interview transcript. Researchers might be interested in performing their data because they believe performance is the most credible, visible, and persuasive way to communicate the research—there are aspects of life that are difficult to communicate through written text (Saldaña & Omasta, 2021). Researchers might also dramatize their data as a means to analyze their interviews and to gain new insights by scripting, rehearsing, and/or performing the data. Performance is also a way to enhance the research participant’s voice and to help audience members imagine participants’ experiences.

After discussing why performance matters, Johnny describes the practices he used to transform interviews into ethnodramas. He discusses the consent process and provides guidance for condensing the narrative and developing the script. Johnny concludes his talk with his core advice to arts-based researchers, “Stop thinking like a social scientist, and start thinking like an artist.”

Turning transcripts into stories

Speech is not text. A story told is not a story read. Experiments produce results and falsified hypotheses; qualitative studies produce thousands upon thousands of words. At ICQI 2021, Aishath Nasheeda discusses a core research problem for all qualitative researchers, one especially relevant to researchers studying and publishing people’s narratives. The story told during an interview frequently has details missing and the plot may be difficult to understand without the storyteller’s gestures and voice. Aishath describes a collaborative process qualitative researchers might use to build a written story in collaboration with the storyteller using messaging apps and other forms of social media (Nasheeda, Abdullah, Krauss, & Ahmed, 2022). If a critical detail of the narrative is unclear or if an important reference is inferred, rather than explicated, Aishath describes how she messages the story-teller and asks them to explain their intent. In her talk, Aishath discusses the many practices she uses to transform interview data into published narratives.

Sophie’s choices: The social act of publishing a qualitative study

Qualitative research is published through shared efforts. Mitch Allen, who led the development of the qualitative research publishing programs at SAGE and at AltaMira Press, discusses the interpersonal relationships that transform data into research and research into a published scholarly monograph. At ICQI 2021, Mitch discusses this content with Carleton University’s Sophia Tamas, the author of one Mitch’s most recognized books, Life After Leaving: The Remains of Spousal Abuse (Tamas, 2016). Mitch and Sophie discuss the negotiations, relationship building, and professional interplay that helped transform Sophie’s research into a book, and her book into a career.

A Video with Discussion of These Papers:

02:27 Participatory Writing. Jessica Gullion, Texas Woman’s University

14:26 Dramatizing Interviews. Johnny Saldaña, Arizona State University

27:41 Turning Transcripts into Stories. Aishath Nasheeda, Villa College, Steven Eric Krauss, University Putra Malaysia, Haslinda binti Abdulla, University Putra Malaysia, and Nobaya binti Ahmad, University Putra Malaysia

40:25 Sophie’s Choices: The Social Act of Publishing a Qualitative Study. Mitch Allen, Scholarly Roadside Service, UC Berkeley, and Flinders University, and Sophie Tamas, Carleton University

104:38 Discussant: Helen Salmon, SAGE

References

Benner, P. E., Hooper-Kyriakidis, P. L., Kyriakidis, P. L. H., & Stannard, D. (2011). Clinical wisdom and interventions in acute and critical care: A thinking-in-action approach: Springer.

Biklen, S. K. (1995). School work: Gender and the cultural construction of teaching. New York: Teacher's College Press.

Bourgois, P. (2003). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio (2 ed.): Cambridge University Press.

Galman, S. C. (2022). Follow the headlights: On comics-based data analysis. In C. Vanover, P. Mihas, & J. Saldaña (Eds.), Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview: SAGE.

Gullion, J. S. (2022). Writing for a broad audience: Concept papers, blogs, and op-eds. In C. Vanover, P. Mihas, & J. Saldaña (Eds.), Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview: SAGE.

Jackall, R. (1988). Moral mazes : The world of corporate managers: Oxford University Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children: Jossey-Bass.

Mihas, P. (2022). Writing-up practices. In C. Vanover, P. Mihas, & J. Saldaña (Eds.), Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview (pp. 411-414): SAGE.

Nasheeda, A., Abdullah, H. B., Krauss, S. E., & Ahmed, N. B. (2022). Turning transcripts into stories. In A. a. Colleagues (Ed.), Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview (pp. 415-430): SAGE.

Richardson, L. (2000). Writing as a method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 923-948). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Saldaña, J. (2011). Ethnotheatre: Research from page to stage. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast.

Saldaña, J. (2018). Ethnodrama and ethnotheatre: Research as performance. In N. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (5 ed., pp. 377-394): SAGE.

Saldaña, J. (2022). Dramatizing interviews. In C. Vanover, P. Mihas, & J. Saldaña (Eds.), Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview (pp. 335-360): SAGE.

Saldaña, J. (Ed.) (2005). Ethnodrama: An anthology of reality theatre. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira

Saldaña, J., & Omasta, M. (2021). Qualitative research: Analyzing life (2nd ed.): SAGE.

Tamas, S. (2016). Life after leaving: The remains of spousal abuse: Routledge.

Vanover, C., Mihas, P., & Saldaña, J. (Eds.). (2022). Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data: After the interview. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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