Background of Arts-Based Research

Arts-based research is both like and unlike many other forms of social research. First, it is distinguished from more scientific approaches to social research in a number of ways. Social research has been traditionally associated with the social sciences rather than the arts. Indeed, many of the premises, principles, and procedures associated with quantitative, and later qualitative, social research have been adopted and adapted from the physical sciences. Throughout most of the history of Western culture, the methodological “gold standard” for social research has been considered to be the experiment. The experiment, in the physical sciences as well as in social research, was long regarded as the form of research most likely to provide the highest degree of trustworthiness in research findings. Even in quantitative or qualitative research that did not offer the kind of rigor associated with the experiment, a premium was placed on high degrees of validity, reliability, and generalizability (see Chapters One and Four). The ultimate aim was to produce findings that accurately explained social phenomena, reliably predicted the outcomes of events within similar circumstances, and thereby (sometimes) afforded control over future events. For that to happen, social researchers found it necessary to engage in what John Dewey (1960) called a quest for certainty.

This epistemological predisposition toward certainty accorded with the fundamental aims of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, a period of scientism during which two diametrically opposed, and hierarchically arranged, academic cultures were recognized. As identified by C. P. Snow (1959/1993), these two cultures were the scientific and the literary. In general, members of the scientific academic culture regarded the arts with much mistrust. Indeed, the arts and literature were often seen as merely ephemeral and ornamental; as sources of admiration and entertainment; or, even worse, as dangerous distractions from reality. They represented the embodiment of an ephemeral sort of aesthetics, one steeped in bias and subjectivity, inward feelings, emotions, and passions, at the expense of a rigorous devotion to objective truth discovered through a combination of scientific research and cold, hard logic.

However, arts-based research may also share certain features with other forms of research. Some latter-day aestheticians, philosophers, and proponents of arts-based research have refused what they see as a false dichotomy between the arts and sciences, noting that good artists employ rigorous technique, and that the work of science is in many ways artistic (Eisner, 1991). The philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) contended that, indeed, all forms of art are continuous with literature. If there is a continuum of scientific-artistic research, with no easily defined border between the two cultures, then the middle of that continuum may be occupied by qualitative research recognized as part of what has been called genre blurring (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). A term coined by anthropologist-storyteller Clifford Geertz (1973), genre blurring implied an amalgamation of design elements, some associated with the social sciences, others with the arts and humanities. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, among some social scientists there was new attention paid to the poetics of social research texts, to multimedia and various nonverbal forms of disclosure of findings, and to the performance (or “staging”) of research results. It is perhaps ironic that the movement from the more scientific toward the artistic end of the continuum occurred primarily as a result of innovations by researchers trained in various fields of the social sciences.

It was against this backdrop that the term arts-based research was originated by Elliot Eisner of Stanford University and popularized in the 1990s by Eisner and Tom Barone of Arizona State University (formerly Eisner's doctoral student). Eisner and Barone were formally trained, not (primarily) in the social sciences, but in the arts and humanities. Attention to the approach grew, especially as a result of several professional institutes sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). These institutes were codirected by Eisner and Barone; over the years, these also included several prominent researcher colleagues as fellow instructors.

The purpose of the workshops was to introduce qualitative researchers and other academics from North America and elsewhere into a unique approach to social and educational research, one that bore little resemblance to traditional forms of quantitative or qualitative research in the social sciences. Since that time arts-based research has flourished in many fields, including the humanities, education, public health, and social work. Articles, books, and conference presentations that describe arts-based research, address issues surrounding it, and provide examples of it have proliferated. Nevertheless, among those who remain unfamiliar with the research approach, its nature and purpose are often misunderstood.