Portraiture and the use of vignettes to organize research studies

Ed 714 Qualitative Research Methods in Education
Summer 2002
Copyright - Antonia D'Onofrio - 2000/2001/2002
 
 
 

Planning a vignette
 
 

Vignettes integrate observation and interview, as well as a variety of data sources that contribute to the realism of the final product.  The ultimate goal of a vignette, a bounded scene that contains psychological reality with objective experience, is a portrait of a person or a group in context.  It is a good idea to think ahead about a number of context concerns in advance.
 
 

It is important when creating vignettes to be as explicit as possible about the way in which you the researcher encountered important issues that are central to the development of convincing vignettes, and solved them. Your answers become part of your fieldwork.  In class we discussed each of these issues and found examples in Lightfoot's work.
 
 

 Use this outline to plan
 Use it to keep a record of your fieldwork
 Use it as a source of data for developing field reports
 Write your commentary in the space provided

 
When writing vignettes, using the method of portraiture, a researcher provides an account of how these issues were encountered and dealt with in the study. Commentary - Use this space to write about your thoughts.  How have your resolved the issues in each section on this table?
Difficulties accessing the setting :  These can include physical barriers, problems establishing rapport, political barriers, distance.  They can also include psychological difficulties.  These might include the difficulty gaining access to a closed society (e.g., a cult or gang).  Or one might encounter difficulty entering the world of children, or of individuals who are developmentally delayed or physically impaired. -
Developing relationship between you and individuals in the setting:  Problems establishing rapport are core issues in any in-depth study of people and their relationships with one another, and with the researcher.  These need to be explored. -
Developing a rationale for selecting individuals, events and artifacts for study:  A vignette needs to speak to the purpose served by the selection of  participants who will be observed and interviewed over a period of time.  Why are they important, credible, or central to your study?  Why was their experience so meaningful that you decided to explore it with them?  Not only are people part of a vignette but their world is as well.  The same attention needs to be paid to the activities in which they are portrayed and the objects that are part of their world.  One needs to think in terms of portrayal.  How do chosen participants and their context of events and artifacts define important issues in your research -
Describing relationships between individuals and the setting:  How are participants formally and informally connected to one another and to setting in the way descried by Geertz?  He speaks of the importance of discovering webs of significance.  Your perspective needs to account for connectedness. -
Anticipating biases (either yours or those of participants in the study): Prior experience inevitably shapes the way we encounter people and the world.  When a people and their context is new, strange, different, we are likely to infer meanings that need to be validated by those who inhabit the context of our research.  We need to explore how the lens we bring to our study distorts what we view.  We need to be able to describe that view, that distortion, and own it.  We also need to understand that those whom we study are not always aware of their motives and understandings.  They have experiences but do not necessarily examine and questions their own beliefs.  Thus they have biases as well.  These need to be explored.  Much of a qualitative study is the exploration of the encounter of biased views (self and other).  The vignette that allow this to happen is a richly developed one. -
Emerging portrayals of significant characters:  Great portraiture is depiction that capture the psychology of an individual or a group.  It does this by including personal details.  Details that are situated in a carefully constructed background come alive. We hear the person, and feel as if we are there. -
Evidence helpful to understanding  Portrayal is enhanced by including details that are virtual signatures of individuals.  Well chosen dialog, interview responses, stories that are told, experiences related -- these are the ways in which words are used to create understanding.  Details of costume, speech patterns, nonverbal gesture are paths into the psychology of an individual.  The researcher who never preaches or lectures, but who describes using direct evidence in an immediate way, is successful at creating vignettes. -
Apparent cultural categories:  Culture is believed to be the most potent variable to shape human activity and perspective.  Each of use carries in our speech and demeanor clues to the influence of our cultural biography (ies). This is important in the creation of vignettes.  -
Emerging patterns:  As concepts, issues, themes, ideas emerge that appear to organize the information we have gathered in our field work, we should identify them and define them and give examples.  These need to be incorporated in our vignettes so that organizing ideas help the reader to put details of evidence into perspective. -
Uniqueness:  Finally there is the issues of how each person we encounter is more than the totality of his or her exposure to culture and context.  Each expresses these influences in uniquely individual ways.  A successful vignette includes this information. -

 

 Portraiture: The vignette method
 

These are major organizing themes in the Art and Science of Portraiture    How does one engage in each of these activities?  How do each of these elements of portraiture contribute to the authenticity of the final product, a research report?