Using Drawings in Qualitative Interviews: An Introduction to the Practice

Abstract

Drawings are employed by qualitative researchers in many creative ways, and in many different contexts, and a variety of different terms are used to describe similar techniques. I present here a concise description of two basic approaches to integrating participants’ produced drawings into verbal qualitative research interviews, along with characteristic cases of empirical research demonstrating how these approaches have been applied. I also provide a list of best practices and I discuss ethical issues. It is common for qualitative researchers to mix techniques in order to creatively address real-world research challenges. The proposed categorization, augmented by the list of best practices, can help researchers to effectively integrate drawings and verbal interviews into a multimodal research project.