Recently I have been reading “Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide” by Helen Kara. It’s refreshing to read about the various approaches in arts-based research, research using technology, mixed-methods research and trans formative research. It made me think how these methods can be applied in LIS research.

One of the methods is vignettes, which I happened to co-write a paper about with two wonderful librarians, Allison Benedetti and John Jackson. Here’s an excerpt from our paper:

“Vignettes are short
stories about hypothetical characters in hypothetical circumstances, to whose
situation the interviewee is invited to respond. As a
methodological tool, vignettes can be used in focus group interviews, in-depth
interviews, or survey interviews, where the interviewee is invited to draw upon
their own experience, and provide perceptions, opinions, beliefs, attitudes,
and diagnostic predictions about how the fictional character in the vignette
will behave. When
observing or placing an individual in a particular context would not be
possible for logistical or ethical reasons, vignettes are often considered. Approximating a real-world situation, vignettes
allow for features of the context to be specified so that the interviewee can
make normative statements about a set of social circumstances rather than
provide their responses in a vacuum.

Vignettes
are often presented as a written narrative that the interviewee can read. Vignettes
must carry sufficient detail to allow the interviewee to visualize the
hypothetical circumstances as an actual situation. Particularly, the
situational elements of a vignette need to be carefully specified and the main
characters in the vignette are usually given names. Following each vignette,
the researcher may ask an open-ended question or a closed question with a set
of response categories from which the interviewee can choose. Probes are used
when necessary for the interviewee to elaborate on their responses.

In LIS research, vignettes have not been widely used. Given that vignettes
are helpful to depersonalize sensitive topics and encourage respondents to talk
more openly, they could be potentially useful for researching the attitudes and
behaviors of scholars related to publishing, copyright, open access practices,
and practically any area in which libraries are curious about the behaviors and
habits of users. Vignettes could also be used with students to teach about or
demonstrate concepts related to plagiarism and academic integrity. User
experience and web design practices have long been utilizing personas or
archetypes to evaluate designs and functionality of interfaces; there may be a
place for vignettes to augment these practices, perhaps with remote or online
usability studies.”

I would like to continue explore the use of creative methods in LIS research. Writing a blog series about this would help me document my exploration. So this post would be the first in this series. The next method I hope to explore is photovoice. A member of the 2016 IRDL cohort is considering using it. How great is that!