What Is Arts-Based Research?
Arts-based research (ABR) is a methodology that uses artistic processes and forms, visual art, performance, music, poetry, film, theatre, dance, fiction, and other creative practices, as primary ways of understanding and examining experience. Developed by scholars like Elliot Eisner, Tom Barone, and Patricia Leavy, ABR argues that art isn't just a pleasant way to present findings that were generated through conventional methods. Art is itself a mode of inquiry, a way of knowing that accesses emotional, embodied, relational, and aesthetic dimensions of human experience that traditional academic methods often miss. When a researcher creates a poem from interview data, performs ethnographic findings through theatre, or uses collage to analyze cultural practices, they're not illustrating research, they're doing research through artistic practice.
Why Arts-Based Research Matters
Academic conventions, coding, categorizing, abstracting, are powerful but they strip away qualities that matter: emotion, texture, ambiguity, resonance. A statistical table on grief and a poem about grief produce different kinds of knowledge, and both are legitimate. ABR matters because some aspects of human experience resist reduction to propositional statements. It also matters because artistic outputs reach audiences that journal articles don't, communities, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public, making research more accessible and more impactful.
How Arts-Based Research Works
Core Principles
Art as inquiry. The creative process isn't applied after analysis is complete, it is the analysis. Writing a poem from interview data involves selection, interpretation, condensation, and juxtaposition, all analytical acts. The choices a researcher makes in composing an image, shaping a narrative, or choreographing a movement piece are interpretive decisions that produce understanding.
Aesthetic quality matters. ABR isn't an excuse for bad art justified by academic content. The artistic outputs need to work aesthetically, they should evoke, challenge, illuminate, or move their audience. This means ABR researchers need genuine artistic skill or collaboration with practicing artists.
Multiple ways of knowing. ABR draws on epistemologies that recognize cognitive, emotional, somatic, and aesthetic knowledge. A dance about labor migration communicates something different from a thematic analysis of the same data. Neither is superior, they access different dimensions of the same phenomenon.
Audience engagement. ABR outputs are designed to create experience, not just transmit information. A viewer of a research-based film, a reader of a research-based poem, or an audience member at a research-based theatrical performance brings their own interpretive resources to the encounter. The meaning isn't fixed by the researcher, it's co-created with the audience.
Common ABR Forms
Poetic inquiry. Researchers create poems from interview transcripts, field notes, or documents. Found poetry uses participants' exact words rearranged into poetic form. Research poetry condenses complex experiences into language that resonates emotionally while remaining faithful to the data.
Ethnodrama and ethnotheatre. Research findings are adapted into theatrical scripts and performed for audiences. Ethnodrama can involve participants as performers, use verbatim interview excerpts as dialogue, or create fictional composites based on research data.
Visual arts. Painting, drawing, photography, collage, installation, and sculpture all serve as modes of inquiry and representation. Researchers may create visual work themselves or facilitate participant art-making as a data-collection method.
Music and sound. Musical composition, soundscapes, and audio installations represent research through sonic media. Participatory music-making can be both a data-collection method and a community engagement tool.
Literary forms. Creative nonfiction, fiction, and autoethnographic narrative use literary craft to communicate research. These forms can reach broad audiences while maintaining analytical depth.
Film and video. Documentary and experimental film combine visual, auditory, and narrative elements to represent research. Participatory video involves participants in production decisions.
Designing ABR Studies
Start with a question that benefits from artistic treatment. ABR works best for research that involves emotion, embodiment, ambiguity, complexity, or experiences that resist neat categorization. If your findings can be adequately communicated through a table and a paragraph, ABR may not add value.
Choose an art form that fits. Match the art form to both the phenomenon and your skills. If you're studying soundscapes, music may be appropriate. If you're studying bodily experience, dance or performance might work. If you don't have the artistic skills, collaborate with an artist.
Document your process. Because ABR uses unfamiliar methods, you need to articulate and justify your artistic/analytical decisions clearly. Keep a research journal that tracks how creative choices connected to the data.
Evaluate with appropriate criteria. ABR can't be assessed with the same criteria as conventional qualitative research. Leavy and others have proposed criteria including incisiveness (does it cut to the heart of the issue?), generativity (does it provoke new thinking?), aesthetic power (does it work as art?), and resonance (does it connect with audiences' lived experience?).
When to Use Arts-Based Research
- When your research topic involves emotions, relationships, or embodied experiences that resist conventional representation
- When you want to reach audiences beyond academia: communities, policymakers, practitioners, or the general public
- When conventional findings feel flat and you suspect that something important is being lost in the translation from experience to prose
- When participants would benefit from creative modes of expression rather than verbal-only methods
- When your goal is provocation and dialogue rather than definitive answers
Common Mistakes
- Using art as decoration: illustrating conventionally analyzed findings rather than using artistic processes as genuine modes of inquiry
- Producing weak art and defending it by saying "it's research, not art", the dual commitment to research rigor and aesthetic quality is what defines ABR
- Failing to articulate the relationship between artistic decisions and research data which leaves audiences unable to evaluate the work's credibility
Quali-Fi Support
Quali-Fi's multimedia response capabilities support arts-based data collection by allowing participants to submit visual, audio, and video creative works alongside textual reflections, all within a single research instrument. The Intelligence tier ($2,750+/project) provides custom research design for projects that integrate creative methods with structured data collection.
Support creative research methods with Quali-Fi
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be an artist to do arts-based research?
You need either artistic skill or a collaborative relationship with a practicing artist. The artistic output needs to work aesthetically, not just conceptually. If you're not confident in your creative abilities, partner with artists who can bring craft to your data. Some of the strongest ABR emerges from researcher-artist collaborations.
How do I get ABR published in academic journals?
A growing number of journals accept ABR, including the Journal of Arts-Based Research, Qualitative Inquiry, and International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Include a methodological narrative alongside your artistic output explaining your process, decisions, and the relationship between art and data. Some researchers publish the artistic piece and the analytical commentary separately.
Is arts-based research rigorous?
It's rigorous by its own criteria, which differ from conventional qualitative standards. Rigor in ABR means deep engagement with data, skilled artistic practice, transparent process documentation, and outputs that illuminate the phenomenon in ways that alternative methods can't. It's not less rigorous, it's differently rigorous.