Literature in Qualitative Research

Poetry

Poetry has the advantage of conveying specific sensory details, rhythmic structures, and evocative images in a compact and carefully crafted structure. From very few words, the reader can experience the impact of the experience being related. Researchers have used poetic forms to represent the cadences of participant voices, the details of a research context, [Page 486]and representations of research literature and their emotional interpretations of research events. Poetry also has been paired with other art forms such as painting, particularly in arts-based research. Poetry has a distinct advantage because its rhythms and figurative devices enable an embodied sense of the research, which is more difficult to achieve in prose.

Fiction

This type of literature commonly includes genres such as novels, short stories, and dramas. Other examples used in qualitative research are novellas, letters, and diary entries. Researchers rely on fictional texts to focus or elicit participant response and for reporting research findings. The advantages of using fiction include the possibility of representing participants as characters, engaging readers in a narrative of the research site and events, highlighting participant voices and dialogue, and more accurately representing situations where the need for confidentiality is great. Researchers have been debating the ethical implications of portraying participants through the personae of characters, especially when including thoughts as well as dialogue. Some researchers restrict representation of participants to actual responses and observable actions, while others include inner dialogue when it can be supported by the data. Still other researchers argue that they create fictional characters to represent an amalgamation of several participants, details of which can be supported by the data.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction, when categorized as literature, includes such genres as biography and autoethnography. This type of literature represents a shift in the field of journalism from an emphasis on objective reporting to the recognition that fictional and poetic techniques can add to the veracity of the portrayal. Autoethnography, which is particular to qualitative research, is a genre that challenges the notion of the objective observer and the silent author through using literary techniques. Researchers write from their own experiences, relating them to historical, social, and cultural contexts. This reflexive process enables a deep look at self-other interactions. An advantage to using nonfiction (or what is sometimes called creative nonfiction) is its similarity to more traditional forms of reporting research.

...