Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “Framing Experience: Concept Maps,Mind Maps,and Data Collection in Qualitative Research”

It is a pleasure to be included as part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (IIQM). “Framing Experience: Concept Maps, Mind Maps, and Data Collection in Qualitative Research” was an important publication for me both professional and personally. It was a publication that came out of my graduate work and would go one to serve as key touchstone in subsequent methodological and epistemological work. It influenced the publication of 10 journal articles and three books. More importantly, it has shaped how I think about teaching. While not all students embrace my fascination with visual representations of experience, many do.

My coauthor, Jacqueline Faubert, was my graduate professor and a huge supporter both of me and the method I developed. She made important and substantive suggestions to strengthen the manuscript. While she initially refused to be listed as coauthor, it was important to me that her contributions to this work were recognized. I was very pleased to have coauthored a paper with someone I respect so deeply. I understand this paper has been one of the most downloaded in the IIQM’s history. I consider that to be in large part because of the journal’s commitment to open access. I laud the journal for taking this step (before it was fashionable) and for recognizing the importance of connecting students and scholars with information independent of their university affiliation or ability to pay.

Traditionally, qualitative data collection has focused on observation, interviews, and document or artifact review. Building on earlier work on concept mapping in the social sciences, in this paper we described its use in an exploratory pilot study on the perceptions of four Canadians who worked abroad on a criminal justice reform project. Drawing on this study, the authors argue that traditional definitions of concept mapping should be expanded to include more flexible approaches to the collection of graphic representations of experience. In this way, user-generated maps can assist participants to better frame their experience and can help qualitative researchers in the design and development of additional data collection strategies. Whether one calls these data collection tools concept maps or mind maps, for a generation of visually oriented social science researchers, they offer a graphic and participant-centric means to ground data within theory.

Thinking Back on This Publication

How Did It Fit Into Your Career Path?

This article was my second major publication. My first was a coauthored article in Critical Criminology. It was a dense and theory heavy analysis of the influence of various critical criminological approaches on existing criminal justice practice. This paper was quite different. It allowed to me to consider a methodological approach that combined visual elements with interviews. The year 2009 was a productive year for me. I found that I enjoyed the peer-review process and my early experience on this paper, shaped how I approached subsequent peer-review processes with other publications. This paper was an essential touchstone in my career. It directly led to my dissertation research and subsequent publications. When I was hired in my first academic position, my publication record was an important factor. This paper led to others and gave me a clear idea of what it took to convert a paper for a class to an article-length manuscript for peer review.

How Did It Impact Your Work?

Reading back through the peer reviews and suggestions, the IIQM editors supported me to think about the interplay between these two forms of data collection. This publication gave me the experience I needed to adapt this approach in my dissertation, which in turn led to a publication focused on maps and mixed methods. I would go on to write a research methods text and later a criminological theory text. Both of these were informed by desire to combine the visual and narrative. Both retained my interest in encouraging students to experiment with different ways to frame information. I had the confidence to engage in this work because my experience with IIQM suggested it was an area of interest.

How Did It Impact the Field?

I am certainly not the first to consider visual methods. Indeed, as I delved deeper into the literature, and examining the work of international scholars, I have some regrets that I did not connect other work to my meager contribution to the field. In the intervening years, the ways in which we share information have fundamentally altered how literature reviews are conducted. My paper has been cited more than 200 times by authors publishing in medical journals, psychological journals, pedagogical explorations, journals of counseling and mental health, other methodological journals, international development journals, and journals focused on teacher education. That makes me very proud indeed.

Rereading the article recently, I was struck by the confident tone of a young scholar not yet beaten down by never-ending faculty meetings and acidic administrative interactions. If I may be permitted some mild humble bragging, I do think the article was able to describe and justify a visually informed methodology in ways that others have gravitated toward.

Where There Any Surprises That Came From This Publication?

The biggest surprise for me was the interest the paper garnered. I began to see how the work I had done here could be spun out in a variety of ways and become a viable arm of a research program. In my early days as a scholar, I made a lot of use of maps. I mapped papers as part of drafting them, and I mapped my research program, including a section on visual methods. While with more experience I have seen the challenges I identified in my IIQM paper in stark relief, I have not waivered in my belief that how our perception is reported depends to a great extent on the tools we use to share them. Thus, the written word, oral reports, and watching how others engage when they don’t know they are being watched can all elicit different answers to the same question. I still believe by tapping into the tactile experience of putting pen to paper and visualizing something allows people to conceive of and connect ideas in a novel way.

What Is the One Thing That You Think Has Changed the Most in This Area Since You Published This Manuscript?

Visual data collection as a stand-alone or complementary approach is nowhere near as novel today as it once was. I have been intrigued by quantitative scholars explore other sorts of visual representations such as policy graphs. I also think the rise of infographics borrows on some of the assumptions I have made about the need to combine narrative and visual information. At the same time, I have not seen the development of technological efforts to capture experience in more visual ways. I also think there have been some useful critiques raised about the potential that visual data collection on its own can be reductive or fail to capture the nuance and depth narrative interactions allow. While I am not sure I agree, the choice to engage and question the value and import of visual efforts at data collection means to me that the work of many has added to a conversation about how we think about data collection.