Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Trusting Arts-Based Studies

Works of arts-based research are not to be trusted in two ways. First, a work of art may not be phenomenologically truthful in that it does not reflect exact, accurate experiences that can provide insight with certainty for the reader about a phenomenon. If readers expect texts of arts-based research to be literally true, they miss the point of arts-based research discussed earlier. Instead, the reader may expect a believable version of events, a plausibility, a kind of verisimilitude, but not a final “truth” in regard to “how things truly are” from a privileged perspective. Every work of arts-based research is a potential prevarication (Grumet, 1988). In this way the work serves as a framework for experiences that ...