The Journal Project

Abstract

The Journal Project is a qualitative research study of self at the crossroads—a female, middle-aged academic, posttenure, postmenopausal—at sea in her profession and not entirely able to inhabit her own skin. My solution to this dilemma was to study an 18-month period of my personal journals written from June 2006 to March 2008, the period after I received tenure from my university. I used standard qualitative research methods of document analysis to study the 303 entries. The materials were organized and analyzed within NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software. Throughout the process of standard social science analysis, I was also employing arts-based approaches (fiber arts in particular) to deepen and extend my understanding of the findings. The outcome of this work was an exhibit of the fiber works at a qualitative research conference in which I was able to blend the findings derived from a social science analysis within an arts-based presentation. In this piece, I describe the genesis of the Journal Project and document my love affair with fiber arts. The heart of the piece is a description of the exhibit, with attention to the ways that the making of art AND the description of that making extend the possibilities of interpretation for qualitative researchers. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this experiment with arts-based research for my own practice as a qualitative researcher and, by extension, for others.