Draw me a picture, tell me a story: Evoking memory and supporting analysis through pre-interview drawing activities

Abstract

In interviews for interpretive inquiry or interpretive case studies, researchers hope to grasp participants' perspectives and learn about the nature and meaning of their experiences. There are many challenges or requirements for useful or successful interviews. In this paper we identify important aspects of interviews and examine the helpful contributions of using pre-interview activities. Pre-interview activities were drawings or diagrams that participants completed about the experiences of interest. Participants brought the completed drawings to their interviews and the interviews commenced with presentation and discussion of these visuals. This paper presents four studies that illustrate how the use of pre-interview activities can support participants in identifying central ideas in their experiences. In the interviews, the participants spoke at length about the visual representations they produced and in these reflections they identified central ideas or key themes in the experiences. Some drawings were a source of visual metaphors for discussing the experience and some highlighted whole-part relationships that informed interpretation. The findings contribute to conversations about how to "invite stories" rather than "request reports" from participants, how images other than photographs can serve as evocative and potent visuals to support memory and reflection in interviews, and how researchers can better or more directly access a participant's meaning. © 2013 The Governors of the University of Alberta.