Abstract
Use of art-painting, literary works, poetry, music and film–as expressions of life have the potential to explain the everyday world of human beings. The aim of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the lived world of 15 single mothers in Taiwan through the processes of in-depth semi-structured interviews and the use of art work. Van Manen (1997)’s analysis was used for data analysis. In addition to using interviews as the traditional method of data gathering, we also included art work as representations of participants’ lived experience of the phenomenon. The inclusion of art work provided a rich repository of information that not only complemented the interview data (by adding a different dimension to the participants’ experiences of the phenomenon of being a single mother in Taiwan), but also lent support for the use of art work in human science research.
Highlights
The use of artwork - painting, literary works, poetry, music and photography - as modes of sharing personal experiences in research has been given little credence over the years with the exception of Arts-based Research [1,2]
The findings suggest that well-educated widowed single mothers were more likely to access social welfare support than those with limited education or, who had never married
For the purpose of this paper which is concerned with positioning works of art as an appropriate and complementary method of data collection to the traditional phenomenological interview, three core themes are presented using the data from fifteen participants
Summary
The use of artwork - painting, literary works, poetry, music and photography - as modes of sharing personal experiences in research has been given little credence over the years with the exception of Arts-based Research [1,2]. More recently the inclusion of art work as an information source in qualitative research is gaining acceptance. The inclusion of art work as a knowledge source for researchers is dependent on the ontological position of the one conducting the research and the type of knowledge (epistemology) the researcher wishes to generate. The central imperative in taking a particular philosophical or theoretical stance is to generate knowledge that is consistent with the intent of the inquiry. Such an imperative is predicated on the belief that the chosen modes of information gathering provide the best means by which the phenomenal world of human beings can be accessed and understood
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