creative research strategies

What is Creative Research?

What is "creative" or "artistic" research how is it defined and evaluated how is it different from other kinds of research who participates and in what ways - and how are its impacts understood across various fields of inquiry.

After more than two decades of investigation, there is no singular definition of “creative research,” no prescribed or prevailing methodology for yielding practice-based research outcomes, and no universally applied or accepted methodology for assessing such outcomes. Nor do we think there should be.

We can all agree that any type of serious, thoughtful creative production is vital. But institutions need rubrics against which to assess outcomes. So, with the help of the Faculty Research Working Group, we have developed a working definition of creative research which centers inquiry while remaining as broad as possible:

Creative research is creative production that produces new knowledge through an interrogation/disruption of form vs. creative production that refines existing knowledge through an adaptation of convention. It is often characterized by innovation, sustained collaboration and inter/trans-disciplinary or hybrid praxis, challenging conventional rubrics of evaluation and assessment within traditional academic environments.

This is where Tisch can lead.

Artists are natural adapters and translators in the work of interpretation and meaning-making, so we are uniquely qualified to create NEW research paradigms along with appropriate and rigorous methods of assessment. At the same time, because of Tisch's unique position as a professional arts-training school within an R1 university, any consideration of "artistic" or "creative research" always references the rigorous standards of the traditional scholarship also produced here.

The long-term challenge is two-fold. Over the long-term, Tisch will continue to refine its evaluative processes that reward innovation, collaboration, inter/trans-disciplinary and hybrid praxis. At the same time, we must continue to incentivize faculty and student work that is visionary and transcends the obstacles of convention.

As the research nexus for Tisch, our responsibility is to support the Tisch community as it embraces these challenges and continues to educate the next generation of global arts citizens.

Emerging Methods: Creative Research Examples

by Janet Salmons

Dr. Salmons is the Research Community Manager for Sage Research Methods Community. Her most recent book from SAGE Publishing is Doing Qualitative Research Online , which discusses using creative methods online. If ordering from SAGE, use MSPACEQ422 for a 20% discount, valid through the end of December 2022.

Visual and arts-based methods have used in research for a very long time.

Visual and arts-based methods of research have been part of many methodological traditions for a very long time. From the moment that cameras were invented they have been used as research tools. Researchers documented research sites, events, and participants, even though early cameras were unwieldy. Researchers used elicitation methods with photographs and artifacts to generate discussions about meanings and cultural significance. Arts-based methods extended the possibility for rich exchange by inviting participants to express themselves in ways that expand on what could be spoken in an interview response. While many of these approaches are qualitative, quantitative researchers have also long studied visual and artistic materials.

Still, with cameras on our phones that can record images or video, scanned images in databases, and the ability to share arts experiences online, new opportunities for creative approaches continue to emerge. These methods are extending beyond origins in fields such as cultural anthropology, psychology, and sociology and are now used in almost any social science field. Creative methods are used online, in-person, or in hybrid research.

We showcase creative research methods on Sage Research Methods Community, including photovoice , collage , poetry , visual journaling , multimodal visual methods and more . Dr. Helen Kara , author of several books about creative methods, has served as a Mentor in Residence and regular contributor.

It is important to include creative methods in this month’s focus on new and emerging ways to conduct research. This multidisciplinary collection of recent open-access articles demonstrates the rich variety of artistic and creative ways researchers are engaging with participants.

Using Arts-Based and Creative Methods in New Ways

Andrä, c. (2022). crafting stories, making peace creative methods in peace research . millennium, 50(2), 494–523. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298211063510.

Abstract. This article examines the analytical and political potentials of creative methods for peace research. Specifically, the article argues that creative methods can textile, i.e. render material and irregularly textured, (research on) post-conflict politics. Grounded in a collaborative research project with former combatants in Colombia, the article takes this project’s methods – narrative practice, textile-making, and a travelling exhibition – as examples to demonstrate how creative methods’ element of making contributes to the development of post-conflict subjectivities and relationships. Casting the data generated by creative methods as crafted stories, the article also shows how in these stories, semantic meaning becomes entangled with material traces of emotional, affective, and embodied experiences of violence and its aftermath, effecting a shift in the post-conflict distribution of the sensible. By exploring creative methods’ capacity for textiling peace (research), the article contributes to research on creativity, the arts, and peace and on the post-conflict trajectories of former combatants.

Balmer, A. (2021). Painting with data: Alternative aesthetics of qualitative research . The Sociological Review, 69(6), 1143–1161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026121991787

Abstract. In this article I outline an original creative method for qualitative research, namely the painting with data technique. This is a participatory methodology which brings creativity and participation through to the analytical phase of qualitative research. Crucially, I acknowledge but also challenge the dominant aesthetic that currently shapes qualitative research and renders life in a monochromatic palette. The painting with data method evidences an alternative aesthetic to the predominant one and I argue that we can understand this methodology by adapting Jennifer Mason’s concept of ‘layering’ to conceptualise how different aesthetics help us to see the different shapes, forms and moulds that make us, our relationships and our worlds. The process moves away from traditional ways of treating transcribed data, and prioritises addition above extraction; juxtaposition over thematisation; and collaging rather than ordering. This alternative aesthetic for qualitative research offers an evocative form and a conceptual schema through which to interpret the world, providing a route to novel insights, that enlivens the interpretative work of the analyst and offers opportunities to make and witness potent connections.

Dahal, P., Joshi, S. K., & Swahnberg, K. (2021). Does Forum Theater Help Reduce Gender Inequalities and Violence? Findings From Nepal . Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260521997457

Abstract. Gender inequality and violence against women are present in every society and culture around the world. The intensities vary, however, based on the local guiding norms and established belief systems. The society of Nepal is centered on traditional belief systems of gender roles and responsibilities, providing greater male supremacy and subordination for the females. This has led to the development and extensive practices of social gender hierarchal systems, producing several inequalities and violence toward women. This study has utilized Forum Theater interventions as a method of raising awareness in 10 villages in eastern Nepal. The study aimed to understand the perception and changes in the community and individuals from the interactive Forum Theater performances on pertinent local gender issues. We conducted 6 focus group discussions and 30 individual interviews with male and female participants exposed to the interventions. The data analysis utilized the constructivist grounded theory methodology. The study finds that exposure and interactive participation in the Forum Theater provide the audience with knowledge, develop empathy toward the victim, and motivate them to change the situation of inequality, abuse, and violence using dialogues and negotiations. The study describes how participation in Forum Theater has increased individual’s ability for negotiating changes. The engagement by the audience in community discussions and replication of efforts in one of the intervention sites show the level of preparedness and ownership among the targeted communities. The study shows the methodological aspects of the planning and performance of the Forum Theater and recommends further exploration of the use of Forum Theater in raising awareness.

Earle-Brown, H. (2021). Little Miss Homeless: creative methods for research impact . Cultural Geographies, 28(2), 409–415. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474020987244

Abstract. Women’s homelessness is a significant and increasing problem in the UK. Yet, much research on homelessness does not acknowledge the particular gendered issues homeless women face. Furthermore, the small amount of research available on the matter is often restricted to academic and professional audiences. Little Miss Homeless, a culture jammed children’s book, was produced with the intention of making wider public audiences aware and engaged with issues relating to women’s homelessness. This article traces through the process of producing the book and reflects on the emerging interest within cultural geography to use creative methods of research dissemination in order to engage wider public audiences with our research.

Harrison, K., & Ogden, C. A. (2021). ‘ Knit “n” natter’: a feminist methodological assessment of using creative ‘women’s work’ in focus groups . Qualitative Research, 21(5), 633–649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120945133

Abstract. This article outlines the methodological innovations generated in a study of knitting and femininity in Britain. The study utilised ‘knit “n” natter’ focus groups during which female participants were encouraged to knit and talk. The research design encompassed a traditionally undervalued form of domestic ‘women’s work’ to recognise the creative skills of female practitioners. ‘Knit “n” natter’ is a fruitful feminist research method in relation to its capitalisation on female participants’ creativity, its disruption of expertise and its feminisation of academic space. The method challenges patriarchal conventions of knowledge production and gendered power relations in research, but it also reproduces problematic constructions of gender, which are acknowledged. The study contributes to a growing body of work on creative participatory methods and finds that the ‘knit “n” natter’ format has utility beyond investigations of crafting and may be used productively in other contexts where in-depth research with women is desirable.

Goldman, A., Gervis, M., & Griffiths, M. (2022). Emotion mapping: Exploring creative methods to understand the psychology of long-term injury . Methodological Innovations , 15 (1), 16–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221077924

Abstract. This methodological study details the effectiveness of emotion mapping as a method to explore the lived experiences of professional male athletes ( n = 9) with a long-term injury. This represents the first use of emotion mapping to garner phenomenal knowledge on long-term injury within a sport psychology context, and as such is a departure from traditional approaches in this field. Following an orientation meeting, each participant was asked to produce an emotion map in the privacy of their home of two critical spaces occupied during their rehabilitation. Using video conferencing software, they were then asked to narrate their map, to facilitate understanding of their lived experiences of injury. Overall, the method was found to be efficacious in supporting existing literature on injury and revealing previously unknown aspects of long-term injury. In particular, the study provided phenomenal knowledge that was previously absent. As such, recommendations are made for the use of emotion mapping both as an effective research technique, and as a therapeutic tool.

Lahman, M. K. E., De Oliveira, B., Cox, D., Sebastian, M. L., Cadogan, K., Rundle Kahn, A., Lafferty, M., Morgan, M., Thapa, K., Thomas, R., & Zakotnik-Gutierrez, J. (2021). Own Your Walls: Portraiture and Researcher Reflexive Collage Self-Portraits . Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 136–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419897699

Abstract. As part of an advanced doctoral research course, class members participated in an in-depth exploration of the methodology portraiture. In this article, the authors—course instructor and 10 students—represent themselves as researchers through collage portraits and written reflexive responses. A brief review of portraiture, collage in research, and researcher reflexivity, along with descriptions of relevant course experiences are presented. Images of the collage process and resulting portraits are highlighted. A collage portrait of a class emerges as issues of transparency in research, the role of the researcher, and the use of art in research are explored.

Manuel, J., & Vigar, G. (2021). Enhancing citizen engagement in planning through participatory film-making . Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48(6), 1558–1573. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808320936280

Abstract. There is a long history of engaging citizens in planning processes, and the intention to involve them actively in planning is a common objective. However, the reality of doing so is rather fraught and much empirical work suggests poor results. Partly in response an increasingly sophisticated toolkit of methods has emerged, and, in recent years, the deployment of various creative and digital technologies has enhanced this toolkit. We report here on case study research that deployed participatory film-making to augment a process of neighbourhood planning. We conclude that such a technology can elicit issues that might be missed in traditional planning processes; provoke key actors to include more citizens in the process by highlighting existing absences in the knowledge base; and, finally, provoke greater deliberation on issues by providing spaces for reflection and debate. We note, however, that while participants in film-making were positive about the experience, such creative methods were side-lined as established forms of technical–rational planning reasserted themselves.

Parsons, L. T., & Pinkerton, L. (2022). Poetry and prose as methodology: A synergy of knowing. Methodological Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221087150

Abstract. In this study, situated in the borderland between traditional and artistic methodologies, we innovatively represent our research findings in both prose and poetry. This is an act of exploration and resistance to hegemonic assumptions about legitimate research writing. A content analysis of young adult literature featuring trafficked child soldiers is the vehicle through which we advocate for the simultaneous use of prose and poetry. Several overarching insights emerged from this work as our prose and poetic representations, taken together, did more than either could have done on its own. We noted significant differences in scope, impact, and use of words when representing findings in the two forms. Additionally, independently selecting many of the same quotes as we created our separate representations contributed to the validity of the analysis. We saw very concretely that what one knows in one form one might know differently in another, generating a synergy of knowing.

Using Visual Methods in Research: Podcast and Video Interview

The doll’s marriage: an ethnographic encounter with rural children and childhood.

Transforming Society
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Creative Research Methods

A Practical Guide

By helen kara.

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Description

Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.

This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods:

• arts-based research

• embodied research

• research using technology

• multi-modal research

• transformative research frameworks.

Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.

Creative Research Methods has been cited over 750 times.

Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and specialises in research methods and ethics. She is the author of Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Time-Saving Guide (Policy Press, 2nd ed. 2017) and Research Ethics in the Real World: Euro-Western and Indigenous Perspectives (Policy Press, 2018). Helen is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Introducing Creative Research

Creative Research Methods in Practice

Transformative Research Frameworks and Indigenous Research

Creative Research Methods and Ethics

Creative Thinking

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Gathering

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Gathering

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Analysis

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Analysis

Arts-Based and Embodied Research Reporting

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Research Reporting

Arts-Based and Embodied Presentation

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Presentation

From Research Into Practice

Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work (Second Edition)

Edited by Saul Becker , Alan Bryman and Harry Ferguson

Find out more

Social Research with Children and Young People

By Louca-Mai Brady and Berni Graham

Doing Qualitative Desk-Based Research

By Barbara Bassot

Doing Your Research Project with Documents

By Aimee Grant

Doing Reflexivity

By Jon Dean

Creative Research Methods in Education

By Helen Kara , Narelle Lemon , Dawn Mannay and Megan McPherson

Critical Criminology and Literary Criticism

By Rafe McGregor

Qualitative and Digital Research in Times of Crisis

Edited by Helen Kara and Su-ming Khoo

Narrative Research Now

Edited by Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn

Photovoice Reimagined

By Nicole Brown

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis

Edited by Helen Kara , Dawn Mannay and Alastair Roy

Fiction and Research

By Becky Tipper and Leah Gilman

Doing Phenomenography

By Amanda Taylor-Beswick and Eva Hornung

Encountering the World with I-docs

By Ella Harris

Embedding Young People's Participation in Health Services

Edited by Louca-Mai Brady

Research Methodologies for the Creative Arts & Humanities: Practice-based & practice-led research

Practice-based & practice-led research.

Known by a variety of terms, practice-led research is a conceptual framework that allows a researcher to incorporate their creative practice, creative methods and creative output into the research design and as a part of the research output.

Smith and Dean note that practice-led research arises out of two related ideas. Firstly, "that creative work in itself is a form of research and generates detectable research outputs" ( 2009, p5 ). The product of creative work itself contributes to the outcomes of a research process and contributes to the answer of a research question. Secondly, "creative practice -- the training and specialised knowledge that creative practitioners have and the processes they engage in when they are making art -- can lead to specialised research insights which can then be generalised and written up as research" ( 2009, p5 ). Smith and Dean's point here is that the content and processes of a creative practice generate knowledge and innovations that are different to, but complementary with, other research styles and methods. Practice-led research projects are undertaken across all creative disciplines and, as a result, the approach is very flexible in its implementation able to incorporate a variety of methodologies and methods within its bounds.

Most commonly, a practice-led research project consists of two components: a creative output and a text component, commonly referred to as an exegesis . The two components are not independent, but interact and work together to address the research question. The ECU guidelines for examiners states that the practice-led approach to research is

... based upon the perspective that creative art practices are alternative forms of knowledge embedded in investigation processes and methodologies of the various disciplines of performance … the visual and audio arts, design and creative writing ( "Guidelines and Examination Report for Examination of Doctor of Philosophy theses in creative research disciplines," para. 1 ).

A helpful way to understand this is to think of practice-led research as an approach that allows you to incorporate your creative practices into the research, legitimises the knowledge they reveal and endorses the methodologies, methods and research tools that are characteristic of your discipline.

Additional advice and guidance on the nature and implementation of a practice-led research project may be sought from your supervisors and from the research consultants .

Boyes, E. Masquerade of the feminine (2006)
Clarke, R. What feels true? (2012)
Ellis, S. Indelible (2005)
Grocott, L. Design research & reflective practice (2010)
Hicks, T. Path to abstraction (2011)
Mafe, D. Rephrasing voice (2009)
Noon, D. The pink divide (2012)
Wilkinson, T. Uncertain surrenders (2012)

ECU Library Resources - Practice-Based/ Practice-Led Research

Art practice as research : inquiry in visual arts
Art practice in a digital culture
Artistic practice as research in music : theory, criticism, practice
Creative research
Design research through practice : from the lab, field, and showroom
Live research : methods of practice-led inquiry in performance
Method meets art : arts-based research practice
Mapping landscapes for performance as research
Thinking through practice: art as research in the academy
Digital research in the arts and humanities

34 Creative Approaches to Writing Qualitative Research

Sandra L. Faulkner Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH, USA

Sheila Squillante Chatham University Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Published: 02 September 2020
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This chapter addresses the use of creative writing forms and techniques in qualitative research writing. Paying attention to the aesthetics of writing qualitative work may help researchers achieve their goals. The chapter discusses research method, writing forms, voice, and style as they relate to the craft of creative writing in qualitative research. Researchers use creative writing to highlight the aesthetic in their work, as a form of data analysis, and/or as a qualitative research method. Qualitative researchers are asked to consider their research goals, their audience, and how form and structure will suit their research purpose(s) when considering the kind of creative writing to use in their qualitative writing.

Creative Approaches to Writing Qualitative Research

In 2005, Richardson and St. Pierre wrote,

I confessed that for years I had yawned my way through numerous supposedly exemplary studies. Countless number of texts had I abandoned half read, half scanned.… Qualitative research has to be read, not scanned; its meaning is in the reading.… Was there some way in which to create texts that were vital and made a difference? (pp. 959–960)

How can researchers make their qualitative writing and work interesting? If qualitative researchers use the principles of creative writing, will their work be vital? What does it mean to use creative writing in qualitative research? In this chapter, we answer these questions by focusing on the how and the why of doing and using creative writing in qualitative research through the use of writing examples. We will discuss research method, writing forms, voice, and style as they relate to the craft of creative writing in qualitative research. Researchers use creative writing as a way to highlight the aesthetic in their work (Faulkner, 2020 ), as a form of data analysis (Faulkner, 2017b ), and/or as a qualitative research method (e.g., Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005 ). Table 34.1 asks you to consider the kind of creative writing to use in your qualitative research depending on the goals you wish to accomplish, who your audience is, and what form best suits your research purpose(s). Use the table as a guide for planning your next research project.

Notes : We adapted Table 34.1 from Chapter 1 and material from Chapters 2 , 4 , and 6 in Faulkner and Squillante ( 2016 ).

Writing Goals and Considerations

Using creative approaches to writing qualitative work can add interest to your work, be evocative for your audience, and be used to mirror research aims. Answering the questions we ask in Table 34.1 is a good starting point for a process that most likely will not be linear; you may try many forms of writing in any given project to meet your research goals.

You may use poetry to make your work sing, tell an evocative story of research participants, or demonstrate attention to craft and the research process (Faulkner, 2020 ). Faulkner ( 2006 ) used poetry to present 31 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Jews’ narratives about being gay and Jewish; the poems showed subjective emotional processes, the difficulties of negotiating identities in fieldwork, and the challenges of conducting interviews while being reflexive and conscious in ways that a prose report could not. Faulkner

wrote poems from interviews, observations, and field notes to embody the experience of being LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) and Jewish in ways that pay attention to the senses and offer some narrative and poetic truths about the experience of multiple stigmatized identities. (Faulkner, 2018a , p. 85)

There were poems about research method, poems about individual participants, and poems about the experiences of being gay and Jewish.

You may write memoir or a personal or lyrical essay to show a reflexive and embodied research process. In the feminist ethnography Real Women Run (Faulkner, 2018c ), Faulkner wrote one chapter as an autoethnographic memoir of running and her emerging feminist consciousness from grade school to the present, which includes participant observation at the 2014 Gay Games. Scenes of running in everyday contexts, in road races, and with friends, as well as not running because of physical and psychic injuries, are interspersed with the use of haiku as running logs to show her embodied experiences of running while female and to make an aesthetic argument for running as feminist and relational practice.

You may use a visual and text collage to show interesting and nuanced details about your topic that are not readily known or talked about in other sources in ways that you desire. For instance, Faulkner ( n.d. ) created Web-based material for her feminist ethnography on women and running that presents aspects of the embodied fieldwork through sound and image. A video essay, photo and haiku collage, and soundscapes of running as fieldwork are used to help the audience think differently about women and running. The sounds and sights of running—the noise, the grunts, the breathing, the encouragement, the disappointment—jog the audience through training runs, races, and the in situ embodiment of running. In another example of embodied ethnography, Faulkner ( 2016b ) used photos from fieldwork in Germany along with poems to create a series of virtual postcards that include sound, text, and images of fieldwork. The presentation of atypical postcards shows the false dichotomy between the domestic and public spheres, between the private and the public; they show the interplay between power and difference. In a collage on queering sexuality education in family and school, Faulkner, ( 2018c ) uses poetic collage as queer methodology, manipulating headlines of current events around women’s reproductive health and justice, curriculum from liberal sexuality education, and conversations with her daughter about sex and sexuality to critique sexuality education and policies about women’s health in the United States. Autoethnography in the form of dialogue poems between mother and daughter demonstrates reflexivity. Social science “research questions” frame and push the poetic analysis to show critical engagement with sexuality literature, and the collaging of news headlines about sexuality connects personal experience about sexuality education to larger cultural issues.

You may use fiction or an amalgam/composite of participants’ interviews or stories to protect the privacy and confidentiality of research participants, to make your work useful to those outside the academy, and to “present complex, situated accounts from individuals, rather than breaking data down into categories” (Willis, 2019 ). Krizek ( 1998 ) suggested that

ethnographers employ the literary devices of creative writing—yes, even fiction—to develop a sense of dialogue and copresence with the reader. In other words, bring the reader along into the specific setting as a participant and codiscoverer instead of a passive recipient of a descriptive monologue (p. 93).

In Low-Fat Love Stories , Leavy and Scotti ( 2017 ) used short stories and visual portraits to portray interviews with women about dissatisfying relationships. The stories and “textual visual snapshots” are composite characters created from interviews with women. Faulkner and her colleagues used fictional poetry to unmask sexual harassment in the academy using the pop-culture character Hello Kitty as a way to examine taken-for-granted patterns of behavior (Faulkner, Calafell, & Grimes, 2009 ). The poems, presented in the chapbook Hello Kitty Goes to College (Faulkner, 2012a ), portray administrative and faculty reactions to the standpoints of women of color, untenured women faculty, and students’ experiences and narratives of harassment and hostile learning environments through the fictionalized experiences of Hello Kitty. The absurdity of a fictional character as student and professor is used to make the audience examine their implicit assumptions about the academy, to shake them out of usual ways of thought.

The point of using creative writing practices in your qualitative research writing and method is that writing about your research does not have to be tedious. Reading research writing need not put the reader to sleep; using creative writing can make your research more compelling, authentic, and impactful. You can explain your lexicon to those who do not speak it in compelling and artful ways. The use of creative forms can be a form of public scholarship, a way to make your work more accessible and useful (Faulkner & Squillante, 2019 ). Some scholars have remarked on the irony of using academic language to write about personal relationships and use creative forms, such as the personal narrative, the novel, and poetry, as a means of public scholarship and for accessibility (Bochner, 2014 ; Ellis, 2009 ; Faulkner & Squillante, 2016 ). The goals with this work are to use the personal and aesthetic to help others learn, critique, and envision new ways of relating in personal relationships. For example, in Knit Four, Frog One , a collection of poetry about women’s work and family stories, Faulkner ( 2014 ) wrote narratives in different poetic forms (e.g., collage, free verse, dialogue poems, sonnets) to show grandmother–mother–daughter relationships, women’s work, mothering, family secrets, and patterns of communication in close relationships. The poems represent different versions of family stories that reveal patterns of interaction to tell better stories and offer more possibilities for close relationships.

Creative Forms and Qualitative Writing

Writers have a reputation for collecting material from everywhere and with anyone—especially in their personal relationships—and using it in their writing. This is analogous to fieldwork: immersing yourself in the culture you want to study and engaging in participant observation. We embrace the analogy of the writer as ethnographer because it makes the focus on the writing as method and writing as a way of life (Rose, 1990 ). We encourage you to get your feet wet in the field as a writer and ethnographer. An ethnographer writes ethnography, which is both a process and a product—a process of systematically studying a culture and a product, the writing of a culture. Since we are discussing creative writing as method, we encourage you to be an autoethnographer, an ethnographer who uses personal experience “to describe and critique cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015 , p. 1). An (auto)ethnographer engages in fieldwork. A writer engages in fieldwork through the use of personal experience, participant observation, interviews, archival, library, and online research (Buch & Staller, 2014 ).

You may remember conversations and events that become relevant to your writing. You may write down these conversations and observations. Take photos, selfies, and draw sketches. Sketch poems and collect artifacts. You may post Facebook updates, Instagram and tweet these details, regularly journal, and use that writing in your work. You may keep a theoretical journal during fieldwork and interviews and sketch your understandings in the margins. You may write poetry in your field notes. You may feel unsure how to incorporate the research you do (and live) into your writing; poet Mark Doty ( 2010 ) offered helpful advice:

Not everything can be described, nor need be. The choice of what to evoke, to make any scene seem REAL to the reader, is a crucial one. It might be just those few elements that create both familiarity (what would make, say, a beach feel like a beach?) and surprise (what would rescue that scene from the generic, providing the particular evidence of specificity?). (p. 116)

How to Use Creative Writing to Frame Research (and Vice Versa)

How you incorporate research and personal experience in your work depends on how you want structure and form to work in your writing. The way that scholars who use creative writing in their work cite research and use their personal experience varies: you may include footnotes and endnotes; use a layered text with explicit context, theory, and methodological notes surrounding your poems, prose, and visuals; and sometimes, you may just use the writing.

Some qualitative researchers use dates and epigraphs from historical and research texts in the titles of poems and prose (e.g., Faulkner, 2016a , Panel I: Painting the Church-House Doors Harlot Red on Easter Weekend, 2014) and include chronologies of facts and appendices with endnotes and source material (e.g., Adams, 2011 ; Faulkner, 2012b ), while others use prefaces, appendices, or footnotes with theoretical, methodological, and citational points and prose exposition about the creative writing. Faulkner ( 2016c ) used footnotes of theoretical framings and research literature to critique staid understandings of marriage, interpersonal communication research, and the status quo in an editorial for a special issue on The Promise of Arts-Based, Ethnographic, and Narrative Research in Critical Family Communication Research and Praxis ; all of the academic work was contained in footnotes, so that the story of 10 years of marriage and 10 years of research was highlighted in the main text in 10 sections (an experimental text like we will talk about in the narrative section). In Faulkner’s feminist ethnography, “Postkarten aus Deutschland” (2016b), we see dates included in poem titles, details about cities in poetry lines, and images and places crafted into postcards beside the text. Calafell ( 2007 ) used a letter format to write about mentoring in “Mentoring and Love: An Open Letter” to show faculty of color mentoring students of color as a form of love; the letter form challenges “our understandings of power and hierarchies in these relationships and academia in general” (p. 425).

Writing Form and Structure

Whether you desire to write about an interview as a poem, use personal essay to demonstrate reflexivity in the research process, or create a photoessay about your fieldwork, you must ask yourself some questions before you begin: How will you shape this experience in language so that a reader can connect with it? What scaffolding will you build to support it? How can you arrange your information to leave the correct impression, make the biggest impact? These are questions of form and structure. They are related terms, to be sure, but it is important to understand their distinctions.

When we say form , we can also mean type or genre . For example, essay, poem, and short story are all classic forms in creative writing. Structure refers to the play of language within a form. So, things like chronology, stanza breaks, white space, or even dialogue are structural elements of a text. Think of it like cooking: you have spinach, some eggs, a few tablespoons of sharp cheese. Choose this pan and you have made an omelet; choose that pot and you have soup. Pan or pot is a big decision. Fortunately, you have a big cookbook to flip through for ideas before you light the stove.

To narrate something is to attach a singular voice to a series of actions or thoughts. But it is more than simply voice, isn’t it? Imagine the great narrators of literature and film (e.g., Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird ; Ishmael in Moby Dick ; Ralphie in A Christmas Story ; the Stranger in The Big Lebowski ). They bring their personality, their point of view, their irritations and expectations with them onto the page or screen. Details are not merely flung forth from the narrator’s mind or pen as a string of chronological or sequential happenings. This is no information dump. Rather, a narrative is a shapely thing: organized, polished, curated, its events arranged so that they will reach us, move us. Change us. Simply put, narrative is story .

The evocative narrative as an alternative form of research reporting encourages researchers to transform collected materials into vivid, detailed accounts of lived experience that aims to show how lives are lived, understood, and experienced. The goals of evocative narratives are expressive rather than representational; the communicative significance of this form of research reporting lies in its potential to move readers into the worlds of others, allowing readers to experience these worlds in emotional, even bodily ways. (Kiesigner, 1998 , p. 129)

In the following excerpt from Faulkner’s ( 2016a ) personal narrative written in the form of a triptych about her partner’s cancer, she included scholarly research about a polar vortex, scientific information about the color characteristics of red paint, and historical facts about the church née house she lives in with her family to add nuance and detail to her experience (see Figure 34.1 ). She used library search engines, a goggle search, an interview with a city clerk, her academic background knowledge, and journal articles to find research relevant to social support, weather, and paint. Because Faulkner was writing about cancer, living in a former church, and home as supportive place, the triptych form added another layer and emphasized the role of fate and endurance and resilience in relational difficulties. A triptych is something composed in three sections, such as a work of art like an altarpiece. Constructing the personal narrative as a trilogy with sections—Panel I, Painting the Church-House Doors Harlot Red on Easter Weekend, 2014; Panel II, Talking Cancer, Cookies, and Poetry, Summer Solstice, 2014; Panel III, Knitting a Polar Vortex, January 6–9, 2014—played on the idea of a church-house and story as an altarpiece.

Excerpt from “Cancer Triptych” (Faulkner, 2016a ).

The use of research layered the cancer story; it becomes more than a story of a cancer diagnosis. The story paints the picture of community, social support, and coping.

Memoir and Personal Essay

Memoir is a form that filters and organizes personal events, sifting through to shape and present them in an intentional, mediated, engaging way.

Note, too, what memoir is not : a chronological account of everysinglething that ever happened to you from cradle to grave. That form is called autobiography , and it is normally reserved for people who rule countries or scandalize Hollywood. Mostly, that is not us. Memoir is reflective writing, which tells the true story of one important event or relationship in a person’s life. Autoethnography is a form, which also connects the self with the wider culture. Those who do autoethnography use it to highlight “the ways in which our identities as raced, gendered, aged, sexualized, and classed researchers impact what we see, do, and say” (Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013, p. 35).

Besides autobiography, memoir is probably the form most of us think of when we hear personal story . But what is it about this form, in particular, that makes it a good choice for such stories?

From the perspective of the reader, a good memoir does many things. It renders a world using the same tools a novel might: with lush physical details, vivid scenes, a gripping plot, dramatic tension, and dialogue that moves the story forward. It also makes use of exposition —the kind of writing that provides important background information the reader will need to orient themselves within the story. All these elements combine to make for an immersive reading experience, the kind where the scaffolding disappears and the reader slips wholly into the world the writer has created.

But memoir does something else that makes its form distinct from that of a novel or short story. Where for fiction writers we say they should “show, don’t tell,” for memoirists, that maxim becomes “show AND tell.” The memoirist is not only tasked with rendering an experience concretely through sensory writing for the reader, but also required to explain , in a direct way, the importance of that experience at every turn. We call this kind of language reflection . Think of it as the voice of the now-wise author speaking directly to the reader about their insights and revelations, having come through the experience a changed person.

Personal essay is a form that, like memoir, begins with the writer’s self and draws on experiences from their lives. Also like memoir, personal essay uses the tools of fiction—scene, summary, setting, and dialogue—to create a rich sensory world. The difference between these forms is that memoir uses personal experience to look inward , toward the self, and personal essay uses the same experience to look outward at the world.

For instance, let’s say you grew up as a middle child, with a successful older sister and a mischievous younger brother. Your memories of your childhood are filled with moments when you felt invisible in their midst, the classic middle child. There was that one summer when your parents were focused on your sister’s achievements as she applied to Ivy League colleges. Meanwhile, your brother had discovered the local skateboard community and spent his days on the halfpipe behind the grocery store. Most days he came home bleeding, but happy. This was also the summer you started writing poetry and you wanted to read your drafts to anyone who would listen. But your parents were—in your memory—preoccupied with worry about your siblings. They could not sit still long enough to listen to you. You felt neglected and ignored and the feeling has stayed with you throughout your life.

A memoir about this summer would explore your role in the family dynamic and your particular relationships with each player. It would investigate your own complicity in the situation—were they really ignoring you? Are you exaggerating the memory? Did you sometimes enjoy having that solitude, away from their support, possibly, but also away from their scrutiny? Did the experience of learning to rely on yourself lay an important foundation for your nascent adult self? Your memoir about this summer will delve deeply into these questions so that you can learn something important about yourself, and your reader can learn something important about the human condition by reading it.

Take the same material and cast it as a personal essay, however, and you could be investigating the cultural phenomenon of “middle child syndrome.” Perhaps you will interweave moments from that summer with research about birth order psychology to help you, and your reader, understand something important about middle children in general and, by extension, about the world in which humans interact.

Poems, too, can narrate events and had the explicit job of doing so in many cultures for thousands of years. The oral tradition of poetry kept important stories vital for generations and passed historical, political, and sociological information from generation to generation.

Received forms like the epic (which covered many events) and the ballad (which generally celebrated one event) have been used by poets to spin complex tales, which celebrate and memorialize the stuff of human interaction: love, grief, politics, and war. Think of Odysseus’s journeys as recounted in Homer’s great works The Iliad and The Odyssey or of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as examples of each form, respectively. These forms have survived antiquity and continue, at the hands of the skillful poet, to grip and enthrall readers. Dudley Randall’s 1968 poem, “Ballad of Birmingham,” is a stunning and, sadly, still-relevant lament to racial violence in the American South. Derek Walcott’s 1990 masterpiece, Omeros , is a modern epic that weaves narratives of colonialism, Native American tribal loss, and African displacement over 8,000 lines. Even more recently, the poet Marly Youmans’s 2012 book, Thaliad , offers the survival story of seven children, one of whom is named Thalia, in a postapocalyptic landscape.

Beyond these traditional forms, though, contemporary poets use line and image and stanza to evoke story in less prescribed ways as well. Narrative poems in the 21st century employ many of the same tools that fiction or memoir writers do. They must use setting details to create a specific, sensual world for the poem. They must create engaging characters who interact with one another inside a dynamic scene. There can be dialogue, and certainly there will be dramatic tension—something to drive the story forward and keep the reader enthralled. Faulkner’s ( 2016b ) feminist ethnography, “Postkarten aus Deutschland,” is an example of how a qualitative researcher can use narrative poetry (see Figure 34.2 ). Faulkner wrote a chapbook of poems from participant observation in Mannheim, Germany, like postcards that tell the story of participant observation and the time spent observing and writing down details of living, working, and playing in Germany. Faulkner used scenes of participating as a student in a German class, traveling with her family, and everyday experiences like running, spending time with friends, and shopping to add interest and veracity to the project.

Excerpt from “Postkarten aus Deutschland: A Chapbook of Ethnographic Poetry” (Faulkner, 2016b ).

Poets can create dramatic tension both through the sequencing of details and through word choice, or what poets call diction . It is a mistake to suggest that the only type of poem that can work in service of the personal is the explicitly narrative one. Not all stories require chronology or sequence. Some are best expressed in glimpses of place or time, in vivid flashes of insight. Where a memoir or a long narrative poem will move us through story across place and time, a lyric poem can slow us down to find the story inside a single moment.

The term lyric probably makes you think about music, and this is exactly right. In antiquity, lyric poems were those that expressed personal emotions and feelings and were usually accompanied by music, often played on a stringed instrument called a lyre. They were typically written or originally spoken or sung in the first person.

As poetry has evolved away from song, however, that term lyric has come to refer not to music played alongside the poem, but instead to the music inside it, in the way the poet employs sound devices like alliteration, assonance , and repetition of various types to create the appropriate mood (see Figure 34.3 ).

Lyric poem.

This relationship poem begins with a direct address to a “new husband, old lover” and a recollection of a shared sensual experience, which puts the reader into an intensely intimate space. A first read may evoke feelings of companionship, trust, love, even bliss. The poem’s imagery seems beautiful and comforting—“breeze of butterscotch,” “sun-burnished afternoon,” “breakers of mahogany”—but a second, careful read will reveal something more. The “rolling four-poster” at once suggests sexual connection, but could also suggest instability or chaos. “Arms and ankles all slip-knot and braid” shows bodily closeness, certainly, but note the use of the word “knot” to point to something more complicated—a sense of being bound or trapped.

Further into the poem, we find language like “swaying,” “late,” “tempting,” “laggard,” and “augural,” which come together to form a mood of distinct unease. It is pretty clear this marriage is not going to last much beyond this “honeymoon kiss.”

The music of the poem can be found mainly in the repetition of long “a” sounds. They begin in the title with the word Bay and continue through bay/taste/lay/ankles/braid/breakers/swaying/cane/bracing/waving and return to bay in the final line. This effectively bookends the poem with sound. The strong repetition creates the effect of constraint within the lines and stanzas and also, by extension, within the context of the doomed relationship narrative suggested in the poem.

Faulkner and Squillante ( 2018 ) used an intersectional feminist approach to examine their responses to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and rape culture by creating a video collage composed of video, images, and poetry. Their womanifesta, “Nasty Women Join the Hive,” decentered White feminism through the use of reflexive poetry, repetitive images, and critical questions to invite other women to embrace intersectional feminism and reject White feminism and White fragility.

Experimental Forms

If memoir is the dance between showing and telling, the lyric essay is a flirtation, a suggestion whispered in a reader’s ear, a beckoning for them to come closer. That word, lyric, conveys the idea of music, and indeed lyric essays will place as much importance on sound as they do on sense. They have much in common with poems in this way. Lyric essays are less interested in explicit meaning making than they are in a kind of deep interiority. As with poems, their meaning arrives through the accrual of imagery and the layering of sound. They may offer an image or a scene (a pebble or a rusty nail), vivid and resonant, only to leap from it and land in something new (a strangely shaped root). They expect us to leap with them and invite us to by making use of structural elements like sections, asterisks, subheadings, juxtapositions, and ample white space that draws us closer, asks us to fill in the gaps in a way that enriches and enlarges the meaning.

But be careful: A lyric essay is more than a chaotic selection of items on a table or memories on a page. Just like a narrative is polished and arranged, so are experimental forms. The writer must tune in to the particular frequency emitted by the memory or scene and consider how it will or will not play with the bit next to it. If you are working with the fragmentary and imagistic quality of the memories, a lyric approach may be a form that works best (see Figure 34.4 ).

“Pin the Solje on the Baby” (Squillante, 2009 ).

Squillante ( 2009 ) wrote a section for each image, trying to capture resonant details. After these scenes were written, Squillante analyzed them to see what thread of connection might exist between them and then arranged them in such a way as to heighten the tension between them and suggest a kind of associative narrative that might convey the strangeness and poignancy of that trip for the reader. The piece begins with the eagle’s eye view, almost literally: an enormous mountain top viewed from a plane’s window creates in the speaker a sense of awe mixed with disorientation. This is someplace wholly new, wholly unfamiliar. The piece moves from the telescopic first section to a microscopic second section as the images become intimate and interior and much more explicitly about the uncertainty of identity. Who am I in this new space ? Space refers both to geography and to family structure. The final section stays on the ground but uses a wide-angle lens to show a return to the awe and disorientation of the first and second sections now set in a larger context: Don’t we all feel this way sometimes?

Lyric essays, with their sidelong glances, are useful vehicles for personal writing because they tap into our subconscious mind. They force us to think in terms of image and metaphor—those powerful knowledge-making tools wielded by poets. And, whereas a memoir will stare the subject down, scrutinize it until it gives forth meaning, a lyric essay will come at its subject laterally, from around the corner, in the periphery. It sneaks up on meaning in a way that is surprising and satisfying for both writer and reader.

One way to structure a lyric piece is to use numbers or some other kind of mark, such as an asterisk, to separate sections. We sometimes refer to essays that do this as numbered or segmented (e.g., Faulkner, 2016c ; Squillante, 2015 ).

Another way to structure lyric essays is less about friction and more about a kind of layered fluidity that happens when sections build off each other, echo, break off, and return. We call these braided essays , and they mimic the way our stories often emerge—in separate strands we must weave together to make sense of them. For instance, in JoAnn Beard’s ( 1996 ) excellent personal essay, “The Fourth State of Matter,” four separate plot lines merge to give the reader a portrait of a woman in stasis: a dying dog, a crumbling marriage, an infestation of squirrels, and a campus shooting that took the lives of four faculty—friends and colleagues of the author—and one student at the University of Iowa in 1991.

Brenda Miller’s ( 2001 ) essay, “The Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay,” is an instruction manual for the braided essay, while at the same time a wonderful example of the form itself. Miller weaves sections about sharing a loaf of challah—a Jewish braided bread—with her students as a way of teaching them the braided essay form, with sections that use the challah as a way to talk about her own family and cultural identity and sections that instruct the reader, using the voice of a recipe, on how to bake the challah themselves. Each strand itself could be said to have its own trajectory, but woven together, experienced as a whole, it takes on a deeper and broader resonance. A more sustaining, delicious meal. In the section below, Miller meditates on the baking process, but it is also obviously about the writing process:

All good bread makers develop a finely honed sense of intuition that comes into play at every step of the process: knowing exactly the temperature of the water in which to proof your yeast, testing it not with a thermometer but against the most sensitive skin at the underside of your wrist, with the same thoughtful stance as a mother testing a baby’s formula. You add the warm milk, the butter, the salt, a bit of sugar. After a while you stop measuring the flour as you stir, knowing the correct texture through the way it resists your arm. You take the sticky dough in your hands and knead, folding the dough toward you, then pushing away with the heel of your hand, turning and repeating, working and working with your entire body—your legs, your abdomen, your strong heart. Your work the dough until it takes on the texture of satin. You poke it with your index finger and it sighs against your touch. (Miller, 2001 , pp. 19–20)

Doesn’t that recipe-esque structure work beautifully here? It is at once familiar and comforting as well as delightfully surprising. Miller’s choice to use the metaphor of baking—a strenuous, bodily activity—as a way to talk about writing, which is often thought of as only abstract and intellectual, is fresh and persuasive. Miller herself named these kinds of pieces “hermit crab essays,” after the creature who borrows the shell of another alien form to make its home. Here, Miller’s essay borrows the form of a recipe so that she can talk about all the ingredients that go into teaching, and it ends up being a perfect metaphor as well as an effective form for the content.

Remember the middle school pleasure in cutting out words and phrases from glossy magazines and arranging them in interesting, surprising, resonant-to-you ways on the page? It is entirely possible to do this through language as well, and the process, one we might term bricolage or collage , is yet another tool for approaching difficult or complicated narratives and interviews. In this mode writers generate work by excerpting and juxtaposing material from other sources. For example, Faulkner ( 2017a ) used baby artifacts, photos, and text and made digital and paper collages, as in Figure 34.5 .

Feeding from “MotherWork: A Queer Scrapbook” (Faulkner, 2017a ).

Faulkner ( 2017a ) used a series of collage poems composed from family artifacts, feminist research, and systematic recollections as a type of baby scrapbook form to queer staid understandings of White middle-class mothering, to

critique and interrogate expectations and attitudes about what mothers should do, think, and feel. Good mothers in a pro-natalist culture should channel their creativity into things like making scrapbooks of their progeny. Spending time developing identities other than mother—such as poet, academic, and partner—makes fulfilling the normative role of the “good mother” impossible. (Faulkner, 2017a , p. 166)

The feminist texts, poetry, images, and poetic analysis were a queer methodology, or what Halberstam (1998) calls scavenger methodology.

A queer methodology, in a way, is a scavenger methodology that uses different methods to collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies of human behavior. The queer methodology attempts to combine methods that are often cast as being at odds with each other, and it refuses the academic compulsion toward disciplinary coherence. (p. 13)

Audience, Voice, and Point of View

We are always in dialogue with someone when we write: a text message to a friend, a letter to your great aunt, a term paper for your communication professor, a poem to your lover, an article to your editor. Even diary writing—that most personal of gestures—seeks to engage with an audience of the self. Talking to ourselves can be as persuasive and productive as talking with each other. Think of this like a research journal where you try out different voices and forms and creative writing. In fact, we urge you to keep a research journal wherein you experiment with form and voice while you write your qualitative research.

We believe that writing is a social act. We believe that writing can connect us and our research with the large world and our own small desires. When we write, it helps us to imagine someday readers of our words. Will they embrace them? Will they argue with them? Will they consider their own lives differently as a result of reading them? Will they remember them?

You will make different choices about form and possibly even content depending on who you imagine your audience to be. Sometimes it will be an abstract audience made up of “mothers” or “New Yorker readers,” or “social scientists,” and sometimes you will have a very specific face in mind as you write your research. Keeping your audience firmly in mind as you draft will make it easier for you to choose what information to include and what to (most definitely) leave out.

Beyond form and content, you may also find the need to adjust voice and point of view in your creative writing.

Say your son got a bearded dragon for his 10th birthday and that this dragon eats something like 80 live crickets a day.

Say your son is in charge of feeding the crickets to his dragon in the morning before he leaves for school and say, on one particular morning, in your rush to get him out the door, you do not see that the lid to the cricket cage has been left slightly askew.

Say you throw yourself into the shower so you will be on time for meetings with your students, and when you come out, you find 200 chirping creatures hopping about the living room, gleeful for their freedom (until the cats find them, anyway.).

When your son comes home, you must speak to him about this. You must make him understand that the dragon is his responsibility. That he must be more careful with its care. In this conversation, you will not be screaming (that happened immediately on exiting the shower). You will have calmed down considerably by this point. But you will be using your “Serious Voice.”

Later, when you recount the day’s calamity to your husband, outlining the qualities of a proper living environment for crickets, dragons, and humans, he will, using his “Gentle Voice,” ask you to reconsider using your “Teacher Voice.” After all, he has read the reptile manual, too.

The term voice , as we use it in writing, refers to an aggregate of qualities that create, on the page, an idiosyncratic sense of the writer’s self. We sometimes use this interchangeably with the idea of style.

Voice is the thing that helps us identify one author from another. If I were to ask you to close your eyes and listen to me read examples of language excerpted from different works of literature, you would be able to tell quite easily which one was written by J. K. Rowling and which by Ernest Hemingway. Why?

It is more than simply “they sound different.” They do, but it is worth noting the various elements that must work in concert to create that “sound” on the page. They include things like diction and word choice, sentence or line structure, punctuation, tone, use of dialogue, figurative language (or lack of), and even subject matter.

You have probably heard writers talk about “finding their voice” through the process of writing. The idea is that the more time you dedicate to your craft, the clearer the voice that sings from the page and the truer to the writer’s self it will be. On the one hand, this makes perfect sense: the more we practice something, the better we become at it.

But on the other hand, here’s the thing: we do not think you need to find your voice. We think you already have one. In fact, we think you have many voices. The trick is figuring out which one to use for your qualitative writing today.

To tell that tale, I soon discovered, I had to find the right tone of voice; the one I habitually lived with wouldn’t do at all: it whined, it grated, it accused; above all it accused. Then there was the matter of syntax: my own ordinary, everyday sentence—fragments, interjecting, overriding—also wouldn’t do; it had to be altered, modified, brought under control. And then I could see … that I needed to pull back—way back—from these people and these events to find the place where the story could draw a deep breath and take its own measure. In short, a useful point of view, one that would permit greater freedom of association … had to be brought along. What I didn’t see … was that this point of view could only emerge from a narrator who was me and that same time was not me. (Gornick, 2001 , pp. 21–22)

Related to the idea of voice is the term persona , or as Vivian Gornick refers to it, narrator . When we sit down to approach raw material from our research with the intention of shaping it into a story, we must first consider our relationship to that material, our positioning with respect to it. We need to call on the correct persona (or, as Vivian Gornick calls it, the narrator) within us who can best tell the story of the research.

Beyond choosing a persona for your work, you will also need to choose a point of view through which to tell it. It probably seems fairly obvious that writing personal essays would require a certain closeness to the subject. It may feel most natural to you to adopt the first-person perspective, in which a confident “I” can proclaim itself and take ownership of the story on the page. First-person narrators can present as direct and sure or as vulnerable and raw. Consider the power of the first-person narration in Sharon Olds’s poem, “The Race,” a poem that describes the speaker sprinting through an airport to make the flight that will take her to her dying father’s bedside. There is a breathless immediacy in the poem. We can feel the speaker’s desperation and resolve, the ache in her legs and lungs as she runs toward the gate. This has to do with the careful selection of sensory details and with that first-person narration that allows the poet to re-enter the experience fully to render it clearly for a reader.

Similarly, when Squillante ( 2010 ) was writing the personal essay “Cry, Baby,” she was trying to work out complicated feelings about the experience of mothering her daughter through a difficult infancy and her own postpartum depression. It was painful material, but she needed to feel as close to it as possible to make sense of it (see Figure 34.6 ).

Excerpt from “Cry, Baby” (Squillante, 2010 ).

The first-person point of view can put your reader at ease and connect experiences. It is like a hand held out in acknowledgment and support: this is my story; perhaps it will speak to you, too. This is the goal of much of our qualitative research writing: to be evocative, to get the audience to act, to connect a personal story to larger cultural patterns, to represent your research participants in nuanced and sensitive ways.

It is not the only choice for writing, though. Consider the effect of the second-person narration in the excerpt from Squillante’s ( 2012a ) “Two Suicides” (see Figure 34.7 ).

Excerpt from “Two Suicides” (Squillante, 2012a ).

This essay wrestles with the complexities of friendship, love, divorce, and death—painful, personal stuff that questions more than it answers. Squillante ( 2012a ) chose to use the second-person point of view throughout this piece because of the blurry sense of self that it creates, not I did this, but You did. This personal essay recounts transformative life times when a person does not feel like the person they had always known themselves to be; they experience themselves as an “Other.” Third-person voice allows a distance for reflection; the effect is that of a wiser sibling-self whispering in the narrator’s ear, offering commentary and reflection, direction and support.

Finally, though not as common, the third-person point of view offers the most distant stance in relation to your subject. The effect is observational, detached, almost ethnographic (see Figure 34.8 ). This may be a good point of view to use with your interview work and/or work that is sensitive.

Excerpt from “Self-Portrait with Rollercoaster” (Squillante, 2013 ).

Third-person perspective lets Squillante ( 2013 ) observe this moment from great remove, the way we hear of people who believe their spirits have temporarily left their bodies during medical trauma and claim to have hovered, watching, over their own corporeal fate. Using “the girl,” instead of “I” as the organizing eye allows the suggestion of a kind of universality of experience: the moment we have all had when we recognize that our parents are capable of cruelty.

A final note on point of view: It can be used as a process tool as well as a tool for artifice. If, for instance, one is writing about trauma, a first draft in second or third person can act as a catalyst for necessary but difficult reflection and knowledge making. It can help to get us closer to the material and to feel safe(r) and more able to revise a later draft using that proclaiming, confident first-person voice.

Concluding Thoughts

We encourage qualitative researchers to consider writing, and creative writing in particular, a part of the research process. As you consider different forms and structure for your research, remember that revision is part of the process.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. (Zinsser, 2006 , p. 8)

But we do not end with this quote to frighten you away from adopting, adapting, and studying creative writing as method, as presentation, and as analysis. We ask you to consider writing part of your method and to study the forms you wish to use as you would study research method and methodology to reach your goals with your qualitative writing (e.g., Faulkner, 2017b ).

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Faulkner, S. L. ( 2018 a). “ Crank up the feminism: Poetic inquiry as feminist methodology. ” Humanities, 7, 85.

Faulkner, S. L. ( 2018 b). Queering sexuality education in family and school. In A. Harris , S. Holman Jones , S. L. Faulkner , & E. Brook (Eds.), Queering families, schooling publics: Keywords (pp. 25–41). New York, NY: Routledge.

Faulkner, S. L. ( 2018 c). Real women run: Running as feminist embodiment . New York, NY: Routledge.

Faulkner, S. L. , Calafell, B. M. , & Grimes, D. S. ( 2009 ). Hello Kitty goes to college: Poems about harassment in the academy. In M. Prendergast , C. Leggo , & P. Sameshima (Eds.), Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences (pp. 187–208). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense/Brill.

Faulkner, S. L. , & Ruby, P. D. ( 2015 ). Feminist identity in romantic relationships: A relational dialectics analysis of email discourse as collaborative found poetry. Women’s Studies in Communication, 38, 206–226. doi:10.1080/07491409.2015.1025460 10.1080/07491409.2015.1025460

Faulkner, S. L. , & Squillante, S. ( 2016 ). Writing the personal: Getting your stories onto the page . Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Brill/Sense.

Faulkner, S. L. , & Squillante, S. ( 2018 ). Nasty women join the hive: A womanifesto invitation for White feminists. Women & Language Online, 40(2). Retrieved from womenandlanguage.org/40-2womanifestos

Faulkner, S. L. , & Squillante, S. ( 2019 ). Literature and creative writing as public scholarship. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of methods for public scholarship (pp. 307–334). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Gornick, V. ( 2001 ). The situation and the story: The art of the personal narrative . New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kiesinger, C. E. ( 1998 ). Portrait of an anorexic life. In A. Banks and S. P. Banks (Eds.), Fiction & social research: By ice or fire (pp. 115–136). Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira.

Krizek, R. L. ( 1998 ). Lessons: What the hell are we teaching the next generation anyway? In A. Banks and S. P. Banks (Eds.), Fiction & social research: By ice or fire (pp. 89–113). Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira.

Leavy, P. , & Scotti, V. ( 2017 ). Low-fat love stories . Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense/Brill.

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Creative and practice-based research, what is creative practice research, related guides.

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Hosted by Anne Lennox and Tristan Badham from the Library's Research Support and Services team, the session will delve into the core aspects of open research and gain a comprehensive understanding of the university's enterprise-wide policy.

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Creative practice research, also called practice-based research, is where a specific research question is explored via creative practice processes and/or via the product of a creative endeavour. It is commonly employed in art and design creative practice HDR projects. However, practice-based research also has a history in other disciplines such as medicine, engineering and education where it is often referred to as "action research".

Definitions vary, but research in the creative areas may be considered practice-based or practice-led (Skains, 2018). Practice-based research, according to PRAGUK (n.d., para. 11), is research where the "creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge", whereas in practice-led research the contribution of the research "leads primarily to new understandings about practice". As such, in a practice-based doctoral thesis, creative outputs, such as a sculpture or a novel, are integral to the research process. The written work, which describes the development, nature, and innovation of these creative outputs, is intrinsically linked to the creative work itself and cannot be fully understood without it (Candy, 2006). On the contrary, in a practice-led doctoral thesis, the research results can be entirely conveyed through language, offering theoretical insights into the practice without requiring the inclusion of a creative work.

Candy, L. (2006). Practice based research: A guide . Creativity & Cognition Studios . https://www.creativityandcognition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/PBR-Guide-1.1-2006.pdf PRAGUK (n.d.). Methodology. PRAGUK. https://prag-uk.org/glossary-of-terms/methodology/ Skains, R. L. (2018). Creative practice as research: Discourse on methodology. Media Practice and Education , 19 (1), 82-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2017.1362175

The following video is a presentation and teaching supplement of practice-based methodology for arts practitioners.

The Practice of Research: A Methodology for Practice-Based Research in the Arts (32:09 mins) by L. Skaines ( Youtube )

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Directing actors for non directors: Creative Research Strategies for Fiction Films

2019, The 21st. Century Film, TV, and Media School. Vol. 2, Directing the Future

Culp, Edwin. “Directing Actors for Non-Directors: Creative Research Strategies for Fiction Films” in Maria Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello and Alan Taylor (eds.) The 21st. Century Film, TV, and Media School. Vol. 2, Directing the Future. Sofia: The International Association of Film and Television Schools - CILECT, 2019, pp. 184-198. ISBN: 9786197358087. Throughout film history, many famous scenes and even entire films have been devised with actors improvising on certain general parameters that ultimately depict a character, often vaguely portrayed. These turns to improvisation and narrative experimentation tend to come forward every time filmmakers propose a new rupture, frequently accompanied by technological changes that have made the filmmaking process cheaper or more immediate. From their uncomfortable pauses, mumbled dialogues and candid unawareness, fresh emotional intentions emerge in filmmaking every certain time as refreshing new waves. Digital technologies have recently furthered the issue, as they allow filmmakers to make cheaper and more immediate productions that rely heavily on the work of actors and their ability to react to unexpected circumstances. Despite being one of the most creative resources readily available to young emerging filmmakers, a didactic approach to actor-director tools as a creative research approach is rarely taken into account in Filmmaking courses and curriculums. Even more uncommon is for these courses to go beyond the training of directors to efficiently obtain a specific result from an actor. To devise an improvisational mechanism that embraces the mistake, the accident and the error in a film school environment usually focused on virtuosity is not a minor challenge. In this paper, I argue that by using acting techniques and improvisation strategies to impregnate the whole film production and learning process, directors —and also cinematographers, art directors, image and sound editors— can devise an experimentation space to explore creative aspects of fiction filmmaking. Firstly, I will go over the main points where the techniques for Directing Actors can be useful for filmmaking students (and professionals alike). Then, I will present two exercises that I have used in my own teaching experience.

Related Papers

PaR PhD Thesis

Filippo Romanello

This study proposes repetition as an underlying principle of theatrical performance alternative to representation. It outlines, both in theory and in practice, a method to trim a certain type of intention away from representation, and to apply what’s left, namely repetition, in the process of staging the pre-written text. The aim is to achieve a new ‘aesthetics of spontaneity’ in the passage from text to performance. This aesthetics is new insofar as it employs artificial means to facilitate spontaneous reactions on the part of the actor, under the assumption that the predetermination of intentions, intrinsic to certain modes of theatrical representation, can hinder such reactions. How can repetition be allowed to operate so as to foster spontaneity in the interplay between a given (dramatic or postdramatic) composition and its performance? The research explores the idea of composition as an ‘inscribing practice’, manifesting not only on the page, but also onstage, through a mode of fixing and arranging physical and vocal actions so they can be repeated. Extending Deleuze’s theorizations of Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 2014, first published in 1968) to theatrical performance, I shall demonstrate how spontaneity can be accessed through the performative power of repetition to create ‘difference’, namely to trigger a new reality not as the result of a designed will to novelty, but as the sprouting of spontaneous reactions to the repeated composition. Initially, the study investigates whether the text itself can stimulate the actor’s spontaneity in performance, by means of certain characteristics embedded in the writing. Later, the focus of the investigation shifts from writing to performing: to an exploration of ways of approaching text in general, alternative to representation, capable of producing spontaneous reactions. The practice elements are therefore two: an individual research into writing for performance, and a collaborative research into acting the text.

The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Directing the Future

Dominic Lees

The ideas in this chapter spring from a simple observation, that the title ‘Film Director’ does not tell us much about the rich and varied nature of the profession - it is a little like using the term ‘Artist’ without the multiple subcategories of painter/sculptor/illustrator/printmaker. This chapter proposes that we can identify patterns of difference in how film directors work, sorting them into coherent schemes of creative practice, in order to generate clear pedagogic significance for film education. Although the systems of creative practice initiated by film directors are highly varied, those variations can be grouped together into different ‘Modes’, with each having distinct features. I outline here the ideas around three such Modes of Creative Practice. In doing so, my intention is to begin a process of evolving a Theory of Film Practice relating to the making of screen fiction.

In the 1960s, independent filmmaker, John Cassavetes, challenged cinematic art by incorporating contemporaneous lightweight 16 mm film and sound technology. The iconoclastic Cassavetes ignored classical form, focus and line-crossing rules drawing upon Cinéma Vérité conventions to show the flawed beauty of the human face. Using such innovations, he created performance authenticity of such raw honesty it remains disturbingly real even by today’s standards. Indeed, Cassavetes’ unique films incorporated many elements akin to Russian theatre practitioner Michael Chekhov’s ideas on improvisational body movement and spontaneity to a degree rarely matched. In this way, Cassavetes used the camera, not just as a box for recording images, but as a kinaesthetic device. This included his own physical gyrations whilst operating camera–effectively imitating the actor’s point of view (Carney, 1994), thus creating a spatial metaphor for the emotional distance between characters. This paper revisits some of Cassavetes’ innovations, illuminating them by reference to: the dramatic principles of Chekhov; a practical workshop in kinaesthesia and improvisation conducted at Sapienza University in 2014. The Sapienza workshop utilised principles of spontaneity and kinaesthetic interaction through simple participatory exercises. In an era when digital film form still mostly emulates classical cinematic form, the workshop demonstrates how the use of modern digital media may plunder such rich history from inter-disciplinary sources to enhance new and alternative filmmaking practices.

guilheme boassali

The Actor's Journey

The central question of this thesis is: what are the key principles of live performance presence? My research and its resulting theories, are firmly based in the integrated and constructivist processes of grounded theory. An extensive review and analysis of literature by the likes of Barba, Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Chekhov, Meisner, Bogart, Chaikin, Grotowksi, Brook, Oida, Suzuki, Fo, Lecoq, Zarrilli and Hodge, was triangulated through a focus group and through the application of my theories as praxis. The results of my research have led me to believe that although many theatre practitioners are not in total agreement on the best way to train actors, they do agree that presence is crucial to successful performance. The key principles of such presence, for the purposes of this thesis, are: energy, imagination, awareness and mutuality. These holistic, dynamic and interactive principles are crucial to the development of an actor's presence in performance.

Sarah CArroll

Ellen Denham

Simon Breden

The rehearsal processes of theatre companies are an oft-neglected area of research in Drama and Performance Studies. My study of the Catalan devising collective Els Joglars and the Madrid producing venue Teatro de la Abadía seeks to redress the balance with a close analysis of methodologies employed in rehearsal. In both cases I have witnessed rehearsals first-hand; with Els Joglars observing preparations for En un lugar de Manhattan (2005); in the case of the Abadía working as assistant director on El burlador de Sevilla (2008). These observations are fundamental to a thesis where I have sought to place both companies in a local, national and international context. The thesis examines Els Joglars’ roots in mime and how they have generated a practice-based methodology by means of a hands-on exploration of ideas derived from practitioners as varied as Etienne Decroux and Peter Brook. With Teatro de la Abadía, the focus shifts to how the founder and Artistic Director José Luis Gómez d...

Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Education

James D . Hart

With insight into key pedagogical approaches of theatre training, an understanding of research regarding common psychological characteristics of actors and awareness of identified parallels between arts entrepreneurship and acting course content, arts entrepreneurship instructors can, in their classrooms, increase the likelihood of relating to acting students and subsequently, leverage their students’ inherent and developed skills. Research-based psychological characteristics of actors are offered, as are suggestions to appeal to actors’ general sensibilities (and how they may wish to be engaged). The Stanislavski System is the most popular approach to actor training; its critical structural components are discussed in addition to various offshoots of the original technique. Unique features of acting training such as encouraging imagination, reflection, openness to experience, emotional connections, pursuit of goals and the importance of soft skills are emphasized.

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9 Creative Market Research Strategies

to Understand Your Merchandise Buyers

Market research strategies are crucial for any business, but creating them is often complicated and time-consuming. This is why we’ve unfolded 10 creative strategies you can try on your own business!

What You’ll Find:

Find Out Who’s Buying Your Products
Create a Landing Page
Test Different Designs
Look at Your Competition
Identify the Buying Habits of Your Customer
Find Out What Makes Them Click
Measure Which Customers are Most Likely to Purchase
Use Tools to Make Marketing Easy
Determine the Best Time of Day to Post

Make Stunning Desings for Your Business Hundreds of Freebies for Your Project! Get Freebies

Researching what product your customers are looking to get from you is an essential marketing strategy. The way customers decide what questions to ask Google is similar to how they decide what to buy next. Buyers have specific requirements and ways of engaging, so make sure you speak their language with these ten creative market research strategies .

1. Who is Buying Your Products (Every Stage of the Funnel)

Before you can expand your audience or introduce new products, it’s critical to know as much as possible about your merchandise buyers, their preferences, and buying behaviors. Most eCommerce tools and platforms offer a fair amount of insights into this type of demographic data.

In most cases, creating buyer personas will really help you have a clear idea of your buyers. This is a profile of your ideal customer type and the characteristics that make them a part of your target audience.

These personas act as a guide to understanding the person behind the transaction—their preferences, online buying behaviors, and purchase motivations.

Creating buyer personas is not a one-time task; they must be refined and tested over time as your business evolves. Even companies with a modest ad budget can develop split-testing programs to define further and build buyer personas.

Conducting small test ads in specific zip codes, for instance, or customizing copywriting for a particular gender or age group can help you better understand which audience is most receptive to your message and most likely to make a future purchase.

This type of analytical data is often included right inside your online store.

When you monitor and measure the interest people show in your products, where are clicking on your page, and when they finally make the purchase, you can begin to replicate the experience to encourage even more conversions.

2. Create a Landing Page That’s Perfect for Your Customer

A stand-alone landing page is one of the best marketing tools available to gain insights into what direction your customers want you to take.

Typically designed with a single call to action, landing pages force users to pick a lane—this or that, if you will.

For instance, a local gym might use a landing page with two buttons—find gym hours and take a class online.

By measuring the number of clicks on each option, the data will reveal the percentage of website visitors interested in taking an in-person class versus an online class.

Not all landing pages are this binary, of course.

That’s why many eCommerce companies have multiple landing pages, each designed for a different audience or purpose. The resulting market research helps business owners make informed, data-driven decisions by having various pages and testing those pages for conversion rates.

3. Test Different Designs

Just as your messaging evolves and requires refinement, your website design elements and landing pages need continuous measurement and improvement.

However, with the ease of today’s design software, marketers can design without experience. The ability to create a variety of eCommerce assets and landing pages in a variety of different styles is now easier than ever.

🔥 Figure out the meaning behind the colors you’re using to evoke the emotions you’re after before finalizing all the designs.

4. Look at Your Competition

Your competitors are limited only by your imagination.

Non-traditional adversaries are popping up in the most unexpected places, and they may out-innovate you before you even realize it. In this new era, it’s crucial to know who your competition is and what they offer.

Before analyzing competitor behavior, you’ll need to define who exactly your competitors are. Competitors may be businesses that sell the same or similar products as you, or they may be companies that your customers choose to support instead of you.

To accurately assess your competition, you’ll need to think beyond only those companies in your direct line of sight.

Competitor’s Behavior

Once you’ve zeroed in on your competition, gather information about how they do business so that you can identify gaps in the market and begin to address those gaps with your own merchandising.

While you’ll want to understand what products your competitors offer, competitive research extends far beyond the products themselves. Other areas to explore (ethically, of course) include:

Their brand values
Staffing and future expansion goals
Products offered in other markets
How and where does your competitor’s market
Who they consider their target market to be
Which keywords their website ranks for

You can typically find this information in collateral materials, websites, online social listening, and talking to the community around the business’ location.

Additionally, keyword research tools like Ahrefs or the free Google Chrome plugin, Keywords Everywhere , make it relatively easy to understand which search terms the companies are targeting and garner the best results.

5. Identify the Buying Habits of Your Customer

Once you have established buyer personas, continuing to enhance those personas with information on buying habits allows you to adapt your marketing strategies accordingly.

Tools like Ahrefs can help you understand your competitors’ online performance and provide insights into what adjustments you can make on your website.

While every company should make decisions that are right for their audience and not necessarily attempt to replicate a competitor’s strategy, it’s helpful to consider what’s working in other places.

Categories like “best-sellers” and even sold-out categories help owners understand what volume of merchandise others are moving and how customers respond. By evaluating this type of data on other websites, you can extract valuable data on which to perform your own testing.

6. Find Out What Makes Them Click

Understanding why merchandise buyers click on an item or pass is critical for increasing conversions (actual purchases) and designing future digital marketing campaigns.

While standard analytic reports measure how many clicks an item receives and, ultimately, which items convert, a heat map tool is more likely to give you more valuable data.

Review other websites of similar companies and take note of the specific design elements they use. Then, using the data available to you from SEO tools, make some educated assumptions about the correlation between their design choices and their sales.

Are there design features you can emulate in an authentic way that is true to your brand? Can you reorganize how your merchandise is displayed online to increase conversions?

Finding out what makes customers click is challenging, but through research, testing, and consistency, it’s a creative market research strategy with high returns.

7. Measure Which Customers Are Most Likely to Purchase

Like most people never get to page two of the Google search results, some online customers never scroll more than a page or two of merchandise.

This behavior means it’s essential to display your merchandise strategically and be intentional about leading visitors to click through and convert, not just browse.

The goal is to increase conversion rates (meaning the buyer completes the online purchase) and not simply increase website traffic. Yet, those conversions typically come after a customer has gone through a relatively predictable process:

A customer searches for a keyword associated with their desired purchase.
Your website appears in the search results and the potential customer clicks (website traffic)
A portion of the website visitors scrolls through your online inventory and click on separate product choices (click-through rate)
One of every ten website visitors makes a purchase (conversion)

It’s tempting to set your sights on growing website traffic since, at each stage, the percentage of engagement declines. It’s logical to assume that increasing your starting traffic numbers by 25% can also increase your conversion rate by the same percentage. However, that’s not often the case.

High-traffic product pages do not always convert.

The difference is the buyer’s intention. If you have specific pages that draw many visitors but no buyers, that audience segment is likely at the top of your buying funnel—interested but not ready to purchase.

However, you may also have pages that draw significantly less traffic but convert at a higher rate—those customers are near the bottom of your funnel. They had likely already done their research and intended to visit your website to make a purchase.

The type of traffic you attract is often influenced by your other marketing strategies—content marketing, SEO, social media, and more.

It’s also dependent on your particular niche. If you’re selling to a small, niche audience, those customers are likely to do extensive research before purchasing and, therefore, land on your website when they are near the bottom of the funnel.

On the other hand, if your merchandise is geared more toward a mainstream audience, those marketing efforts are likely to draw “online window shoppers” who have less brand loyalty and make decisions based on price or convenience rather than quality.

These are all factors to consider as you launch future merchandise. Deciding how specialized your brand should be and which audience makes the most sense are business decisions that impact your bottom line.

8. Use Tools to Make Merchandise Marketing Easy

SEO tools, heat maps, social media metrics, buyer personas, content marketing plans—using multiple tools to understand your merchandise buyers is necessary and yet sometimes overwhelming.

MarTech stacks can help make merchandise marketing more manageable, more vertically integrated, and collect valuable data at every stage. These software technology groups simplify your marketing and help with:

Landing page development
Split testing
KPI measurement

HubSpot Marketing Hub incorporates content marketing tools, SEO research , ad management, landing pages, and live chat into one integrated solution.

Outfunnel is another tool that connects your marketing efforts with your sales data, ensuring continuity between your actions and performance metrics. In addition, it offers integrations with other applications, from email marketing to lead generation and customer follow-up .

9. Determine the Best Time of Day to Post

Sharing your brand and product’s benefits, problem-solving solutions, and unique value proposition on social media is a must for today’s digital marketers.

But, knowing what content to share and when to post is one of the most frequently asked questions from marketing teams .

While there is no one-right time to post on social media platforms, there are best practices and many ways to test your theories.

Direct conversion rates from social media posts are often low, but the real value is the collection of valuable engagement signals from your audience.

Tracking how they respond to different advertising campaigns, designs, and messages allows you to continuously research your audience and provide a direct line to give you feedback.

Luckily, several social media tools are available to help you glean the necessary data and use it to improve your online marketing strategies continuously.

Sprout Social gives you a high-level overview of all your social media platforms in one glance, perfect for ensuring you have a cohesive and comprehensive campaign. BuzzSumo is another social media tool that makes it easy to track the key metrics around competitor activity.

Final Thoughts

Choose one, a few, or all of the strategies we’ve discussed as an entry point and measure their effectiveness. Many of these creative ideas can be layered, as well.

Incorporate your buyer personas and design testing into a few landing pages. Devote resources to keyword and competitor research, and then test some of the similar strategies as you launch your next product.

Ultimately, success will come when you treat your customers well, listen to your audience, and are willing to pivot when necessary.

If you have enjoyed this post you might also want to read our How to Align Your Content & UX Marketing Strategy or our Email Marketing For eCommerce Business: 4 Best Practices to Expand Your Business! post.

Author’s Bio

Darya Jandossova Troncoso is a photographer, artist, and writer working on her first novel and managing a digital marketing blog – MarketSplash . In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, cooking, creating art, and learning everything there is to know about digital marketing.

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Spatial Variations of the Activity of 137 Cs and the Contents of Heavy Metals and Petroleum Products in the Polluted Soils of the City of Elektrostal

DEGRADATION, REHABILITATION, AND CONSERVATION OF SOILS
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Published: 15 June 2022
Volume 55 , pages 840–848, ( 2022 )

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D. N. Lipatov 1 ,
V. A. Varachenkov 1 ,
D. V. Manakhov 1 ,
M. M. Karpukhin 1 &
S. V. Mamikhin 1

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The levels of specific activity of 137 Cs and the contents of mobile forms (1 M ammonium acetate extraction) of heavy metals (Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Cr, Pb) and petroleum products were studied in the upper soil horizon of urban landscapes of the city of Elektrostal under conditions of local radioactive and chemical contamination were studied. In the soils within a short radius (0–100 m) around the heavy engineering plant, the specific activity of 137 Cs and the contents of mobile forms of Pb, Cu, and Zn were increased. The lognormal distribution law of 137 Cs was found in the upper (0–10 cm) soil layer; five years after the radiation accident, the specific activity of 137 Cs varied from 6 to 4238 Bq/kg. The coefficients of variation increased with an increase in the degree of soil contamination in the following sequence: Co < Ni < petroleum products < Cr < 137 Cs < Zn < Pb < Cu ranging from 50 to 435%. Statistically significant direct correlation was found between the specific activity of 137 Cs and the contents of mobile forms of Pb, Cu, and Zn in the upper horizon of urban soils, and this fact indicated the spatial conjugacy of local spots of radioactive and polymetallic contamination in the studied area. It was shown that the specific activity of 137 Cs, as well as the content of heavy metals and petroleum products in the upper layer (0–10 cm) of the soils disturbed in the course of decontamination, earthwork and reclamation is reduced.

Geographical Features of Pollution of the Territory of Yakutia With Cesium-137

P. I. Sobakin, A. P. Chevychelov & Ya. R. Gerasimov

Activity Concentration of Natural Radionuclides and Total Heavy Metals Content in Soils of Urban Agglomeration

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INTRODUCTION

Contaminants migrate and accumulate in urban ecosystems under the impact of both natural and technogenic factors. The processes of technogenic migration of 137 Cs are most pronounced in radioactively contaminated territories. It was found in urboecological studies that the intensity of sedimentation of aerosol particles containing radionuclides and heavy metals is determined by the types of the surfaces of roofs, walls, roads, lawns, and parks and by their position within the urban wind field [ 12 , 26 ]. Traffic in the cities results in significant transport of dust and associated contaminants and radionuclides [ 15 , 24 ]. During decontamination measures in the areas of Chernobyl radioactive trace, not only the decrease in the level of contamination but also the possibility of secondary radioactive contamination because of the transportation of contaminated soil particles by wind or water, or anthropogenic transfer of transferring of ground were observed [ 5 , 6 ]. Rainstorm runoff and hydrological transport of dissolved and colloidal forms of 137 Cs can result in the accumulation of this radionuclide in meso- and microdepressions, where sedimentation takes place [ 10 , 16 ]. Different spatial distribution patterns of 137 Cs in soils of particular urban landscapes were found in the city of Ozersk near the nuclear fuel cycle works [ 17 ]. Natural character of 137 Cs migration in soils of Moscow forest-parks and a decrease in its specific activity in industrial areas have been revealed [ 10 ]. Determination of the mean level and parameters of spatial variations of 137 Cs in soils is one of primary tasks of radioecological monitoring of cities, including both unpolluted (background) and contaminated territories.

Emissions and discharges from numerous sources of contamination can cause the accumulation of a wide range of toxicants in urban soils: heavy metals (HMs), oil products (OPs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and other chemical substances. Soil contamination by several groups of toxicants is often observed in urban landscapes [ 20 , 23 ] because of the common contamination source or close pathways of the migration of different contaminants. A comprehensive analysis of contamination of urban soils by radionuclides and heavy metals has been performed in some studies [ 21 , 25 ]. The determination of possible spatial interrelationships between radioactive and chemical contaminations in urban soils is an important problem in urban ecology.

A radiation accident took place in the Elektrostal heavy engineering works (EHEW) in April 2013: a capacious source of 137 Cs entered the smelt furnace, and emission of radioactive aerosols from the aerating duct into the urban environment took place. The activity of molten source was estimated at about 1000–7000 Ci [ 14 ]. The area of contamination in the territory of the plant reached 7500 m 2 . However, radioactive aerosols affected a much larger area around the EHEW, including Krasnaya and Pervomaiskaya streets, and reached Lenin Prospect.

Geochemical evaluation of contamination of the upper soil horizon in the city of Elektrostal was carried out in 1989–1991. This survey indicated the anomalies of concentrations of wolfram, nickel, molybdenum, chromium, and other heavy metals related to accumulation of alloying constituent and impurities of non-ferrous metals in the emissions of steelmaking works [ 19 ].

The aim of our work was to determine the levels of specific activity of 137 Cs, concentrations of mobile forms of heavy metals (Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Cr, and Pb) and oil products in the upper soil horizons in different urban landscapes of the city of Elektrostal under the conditions of local radioactive and chemical contamination.

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D. N. Lipatov, V. A. Varachenkov, D. V. Manakhov, M. M. Karpukhin & S. V. Mamikhin

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Lipatov, D.N., Varachenkov, V.A., Manakhov, D.V. et al. Spatial Variations of the Activity of 137 Cs and the Contents of Heavy Metals and Petroleum Products in the Polluted Soils of the City of Elektrostal. Eurasian Soil Sc. 55 , 840–848 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229322060072

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Received : 21 October 2021

Revised : 22 December 2021

Accepted : 30 December 2021

Published : 15 June 2022

Issue Date : June 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229322060072

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