Walking in Between: a Collaged Storytelling of Data Collection During the Pandemic

Abstract

Collage inquiry is an arts-based research approach that encourages researchers and participants to exercise nonlinear thinking. The purpose of this article is to present a collaged storytelling of my qualitative data collection experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the academic research cycle, data collection was most likely to be affected by the pandemic. Using my data collection digital footprints as primary materials, I reflected on my collage-making steps and the unexpected insights and learning emerged in the process. The collage-making process enriched my understanding of qualitative research and my scholarly identity as a responsible qualitative researcher.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a medical event but also “a social event that is disrupting our social order” (Teti et al., 2020, p. 1). In the academic research process, data collection was the element most likely to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Ahluwalia-Cameron, 2022; Donohue et al., 2021; Opoku et al., 2022). With the unforeseen challenges for data collection during the pandemic, researchers need to quickly adopt new and creative approaches in data collection while adhering to the standard and integrity of scholarly research (Torrentira, 2020). During a period of crisis, researchers need to weigh in on the different factors that would affect researchers’ ability to continue research (Rahman et al., 2021). Perhaps the first question many researchers asked themselves when first entering school closure and national lockdown was “should I pause my research for now?” Not every project can or must continue during the pandemic, but when it does, “there is value in continuing research for its positive outcomes to society, and hence advocate for proactively building resilience into qualitative research” (Rahman et al., 2021, p. 2). The pandemic moved the experience of life partially to a virtual space and prompted new considerations for researcher immersions in research sites (Howlett, 2022). Although online data collection is unlikely to replace in-person data collection entirely, experimenting with different ways to collect data online during the pandemic could foster new collaboration and research opportunities (Parsons et al., 2023; Pocock et al., 2021; Rahman et al., 2021). While technological tools afforded researchers opportunities to continue their work, the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in qualitative research could be amplified by the pandemic. In qualitative research, researchers are likely to engage in emotional labor and emotional work to successfully collect data (Blix & Wettergren, 2015; Rager, 2005). In addition, online data collection during the pandemic could cause zoom fatigue: the experience of exhaustion after excessive time on videoconferencing platforms (Bailenson, 2021). Qualitative researchers are constantly engaged in the negotiation of their positionality in relation to their research participants. Practicing reflexivity within the pandemic and the “racism pandemic” (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020) might invite more researcher vulnerability and emotional work in the process. And, finally, the pandemic has magnified the gender, race, and class inequalities within academia and further affected the productivity of researchers with marginalized backgrounds (Arnold & Woolston, 2020; Staniscuaski et al., 2021). The pandemic created multidimensional impacts on the lives of academic researchers and is leaving long-lasting impacts on research design and implementation (Donohue et al., 2021; Pocock et al., 2021; Sarah et al., 2021).

In January 2020, I was a third-year doctoral student in a PhD in education program at a public university in the southern United States. While writing an email to a research gatekeeper at an organization from which I had hoped to recruit participants for my doctoral dissertation, I was informed that my university would be suspending instruction for 2 weeks in March 2020. I took a natural pause at this time, hoping to return to normalcy in 2 weeks. Little did I know that I would complete my data collection entirely online. Here, I want to present you a not-so-fictionalized nor dramatized vignette that depicts a conversation that I have encountered multiple times in the past few years:

Friend/Colleague/Acquaintance: So, I heard you are collecting data during the pandemic? How did it go?

I: I was so lucky! (Big smile on my face) I found all the people I needed. I was able to complete all my interviews on Zoom. Can you believe that? (Laugh) I mean I see so many people having to completely change their dissertation (frowning) because they couldn’t get into a classroom or go abroad to do fieldwork. Again, I just felt so lucky that I was able to complete everything online. (Praying hand gesture)

We tell stories to make meaning of our lives. I noticed that I formed this narrative of “the lucky one” for myself. I am aware that I was a full-time student without caregiver responsibilities, which resulted in relatively reduced pressure compared with part-time students juggling work, school, and personal life. Personal narrative is a site of performativity, producing and reproducing identities and social relationships (Langellier, 1999). By narrating myself as the lucky one, I wanted to be recognized by my peers as successful and competitive on the job market. Stories that get to be told and heard are often those that reinforce “cultural, social, and disciplinary norms” (Freeman, 2017, p. 43). I began to wonder whether there could be another way to storytelling, revealing more intimate and embodied details of my data collection during the pandemic that disrupt or resist the narrative of “the lucky one.”

The purpose of this article is to present a collaged storytelling (Figure 1) of my experience of qualitative data collection during the pandemic. Ample articles on researchers’ experiences of conducting qualitative research during the pandemic have been published in the past few years (e.g., Howlett, 2022; Parsons et al., 2023). In these articles, researchers focused on lessons learned from challenges and opportunities of collecting data and completing qualitative research projects during challenging circumstances and offered practical recommendations for qualitative researchers and instructors. In this article, my goal was not to present the results of my dissertation or illustrate my success and failures of doing qualitative research during the pandemic as I have done elsewhere (Li, 2021, 2023). I intended to document how collage making unawakens my affective and embodied knowing that has escaped from my consciousness and transformed my understanding of qualitative research.

Figure 1.

A Collage of Data Collection During the Pandemic.

This article began with an overview of collage as a method of inquiry in qualitative research. After a linear narrative of my data collection process, I described the making of the collage and reflected on the new insights generated in this process. Finally, I offered a nonconclusion and further reflected on the use of collage in continually exploring my scholarly practice.

Collage in Qualitative Research

Collage is the simple act of cutting and pasting. Collage inquiry is gaining popularity in qualitative research because it departs from a traditional approach that could be characterized as linear, rational, and logical. Creating collage is to pull disparate and diverse elements from our daily lives together to create “partial, embodied, multivocal, and nonlinear representational” artwork (Butler-Kisber, 2008, p. 265). Collage could be used in multiple stages of qualitative research, including data collection, data analysis, and representation and dissemination (Gerstenblatt, 2013). As a data collection tool, collage encourages participants to “exercise the kinds of non-linear and pre-conscious modes of thinking” and could potentially surface participants’ tacit knowledge about the research topic (Davis & Butler-Kisber, 1999, p. 5). Collage has been used to enrich data collection in a variety of research topics, including educational leadership and teacher professional development (Culshaw, 2019; Mkhize-Mthembu, 2022; Roberts & Woods, 2018), language and literacy (Prasad, 2020; Rice & Dallacqua, 2018), and health and wellness (Margolin, 2014; Safron, 2019). Participants are often given a set of old magazines, newspaper, and other art supplies to create a collage as a response to a question. These studies combined collage with more traditional data collection approaches (e.g., interview) to obtain a more complex data set that invites embodied ways of knowing and creates openness in data analysis and interpretation (Butler-Kisber, 2008; Finley, 2008; Vaughan, 2005). Collage can be used by researchers as a memoing and reflective tool in the research process (Butler-Kisber, 2008). Memoing, populated by grounded theorists, has become a general research and analysis strategy that is employed by most qualitative researchers (Charmaz, 2012). Memoing can serve various functions during the research process, including mapping out research plans, analyzing and interpreting data, and reflecting on subjectivity during analysis (Birks et al., 2008). Although researchers usually develop their own style of memoing, memo writing is generally a linear process where the researcher writes out the new ideas they have while interacting with data. Lahman and doctoral students (Lahman et al., 2020, 2021) engaged with collage materials to memo a data set and create a reflexive self-portrait to reveal layered understandings of research topics and researcher positionality. Holbrook and Pourchier (2014) used collage to produce analysis in a post-qualitative research context that is “simultaneous and non-hierarchical” (p. 754). Memoing and analyzing data using collage breaks the linearity of memo writing and can result in juxtapositions that reveal new relationships and connections of ideas that were previously unknown (Butler-Kisber, 2008; Butler-Kisber & Poldma, 2010; Vaughan, 2005).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have turned to collage as a tool to process the various embodied experiences of the pandemic. Collage was used to explore and express the multifaceted experiences of living through the pandemic. Ferro (2022) analyzed the daily digital collages they created in 2020 to understand grief and loss in this period of collective trauma. Kang et al. (2022) worked collaboratively to create collages as a part of a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry to express the racialized experience as Korean female international students in the United States. Incorporating collage in autoethnography enables researchers to engage in affective knowing and critically engage with and extend personal written narratives (Richmond, 2022). Collage was also used as a form of intervention to support the well-being of individuals affected by the pandemic. Helmick (2022) organized a series of collage-making workshops using zoom to support educators’ well-being. Keisari et al. (2022) examined how spirituality was expressed by older adults in Italy and Israel during COVID-19 lockdowns through collaborative photo collage. Pybus et al. (2022) engaged parents and caregivers in collaborative zine-making (a blend of texts and images) to explore their challenges and stresses living in low-income households in the United Kingdom. Seregina and Bröckerhoff (2022) facilitated four online collage sessions as a communal space for reflection and discussion of the experiences of winter holidays under COVID-19 restrictions in the United Kingdom. Lomax et al. (2022) used digital collage and other creative digital methods to support children’s engagement in a participatory action research project during school closure and lockdowns in the United Kingdom. These projects, although varied in focus and scope, all intended to engage with participants in a participative and action-oriented way that valued dialogue and inclusivity and addressed marginalization and social inequalities (Finley, 2008).

A Linear Narrative of Data Collection During the Pandemic

Here I want to provide one layer of the story, namely, a liner narrative of my data collection experience during the pandemic as written in my dissertation.

The purpose of my dissertation study was to understand the informal and incidental learning (Marsick & Watkins, 2001) experienced by teachers in adult English as a second language (ESL) contexts and the impact of the learning on their development of intercultural maturity (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005). This study used an explanatory sequential, mixed-methods design (Creswell, 2014). It started with the collection of quantitative data through surveys and was followed by critical incident interviews. The study began recruiting participants in Georgia in January 2020. I contacted adult ESL programs hosted in various organizations in Georgia to recruit participants. For programs that agreed to participate, the program managers would sign a site permission letter and forward the Qualtrics survey link to their teacher/volunteer mailing list. The recruitment in Georgia stopped in March 2020 because many adult ESL programs began to close due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. I resumed participant recruitment in April. At this stage, I focused on recruiting from online communities and professional organization listserv, such as TESOL International, American Association for Continuing Education, and American Educational Research Association. The survey closed on June 15, 2020. At the end of the survey, participants were asked to type in their email addresses if they would be interested in being contacted for a follow-up interview. Out of the 212 completed surveys, more than 100 participants expressed their interests in a follow-up interview. I contacted 28 potential participants and 12 agreed to participate. These 12 participants were interviewed using Zoom. The data collection officially ended in October 2020.

A Collaged Storytelling

Because I have carefully crafted the narrative of “I am so lucky” for my data collection process, I did not intend to create this collage as a proof for the narrative. My intention of creating this collage was to “reveal experience as it is experienced, not as it is thought” (Freeman, 2017, p. 75). Collage is an appropriate tool because it can reveal intended and unintended relationships between objects, thus surfacing new knowledge of a phenomenon that is previously unknown (Butler-Kisber, 2008; Roberts & Woods, 2018). Collage is also ideal for novice researchers or artists because cutting and sticking papers are basic skills (Butler-Kisber & Poldma, 2010).

I began creating this collage in November 2020, a month after my data collection had ended. Because data collection for my dissertation was completed entirely online, I have left a considerable amount of digital footprints on and offline. These visual texts, carrying both material and discursive weights, were entangled to make data collection possible. But they were never considered official data for my dissertation. Even the recordings of interviews existed as data temporarily and were deleted after transcribing and reviewing. Although data collection in academic research consists of a series of interrelated steps, what we consider as data in interpretative qualitative research are always a stable entity like an interview transcript. Thus, as the first step of creating this collage, I assembled a series of unofficial and temporary data, including the Excel spreadsheet I used to document interview schedules, the emails back and forth between me and several potential participants, and zoom interview recordings. I moved back and forth between documents and software, tracing how they enabled, connected, and disrupted each other. All the paths I traveled took me back to the Excel spreadsheet where I documented the information of the participants who indicated their interests in a follow-up interview. I took a snapshot of the Excel spreadsheet and put it as the background of the collage.

In the spreadsheet, I used different colors to document who had been contacted, who had responded, and who had been interviewed. I used techniques such as multicolor highlighting to enhance the orderliness of data collection, with the hope to achieve the good life in academia (successfully collecting data and completing the dissertation). Cannon and Flint (2021) wrote that the “presumed linearity” of the good life in academia that digital tools (e.g., academic platforms such as ResearchGate) presented to academics through an algorithm can be troubling. Similarly, the spreadsheet provided me a list of candidates most suitable for an interview by artificial manipulation. They were ranked by their years of teaching experience, grouped by their teaching locations, and filtered by their results on the survey. However, the spreadsheet never brought true certainty into the process. I didn’t know how they were doing in the pandemic. I didn’t know how they would react to my request for an interview. I didn’t know how they would respond to my interview questions that centered on a phenomenon that we might never return to. Software similar to Excel brought me so close to my potential participants, yet it seemed so far away. Thus, I blurred the snapshot after putting it into the collage. This was often how I felt when I opened this spreadsheet, a sense of blurriness. Ambiguity shouldn’t be a foreign concept for a qualitative researcher. My mentors and peers have shared that conducting scholarly research is a messy process far from linearity (Kamler & Thomson, 2008). In the qualitative research courses I have taken, I was taught that a high tolerance for ambiguity is considered a desired characteristic of qualitative researchers and should be embraced and celebrated in the research process (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015; Preissle & deMarrais, 2016). Yet, despite all the acknowledgment of messiness in the academic discourse, the final product needs to be “this linear, polished, narrative” (Clarence, 2015). With the pandemic disrupting social order and routines, my desire for a sense of orderliness intensified. Isolated in a bedroom and only connected to the world through the internet, everything seemed so close yet so far away. I was desperate to claim a sense of order amid the ambiguity of data collection and the pandemic. Although the spreadsheet never brought a true sense of certainty, I found myself returning to it over and over again.

I then turned to the emails between me and the potential participants I contacted. The email thread all started with a friendly request from me. I found myself cutting and pasting the same excerpts from the initial emails. There was an overwhelming presence of “I” in this process, which surprised me. It shouldn’t surprise me. Haven’t I completed a researcher subjectivity statement to examine my identity and relationship with my research topic? A researcher subjectivity statement is often a required component for a qualitative research dissertation and considered a measure to enhance credibility (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015; Yüksel & Yıldırım, 2015). Macfarlane (2022) offered critique on this type of reflexivity practice, arguing that a positionality statement in a social science research dissertation is often self-stereotyping and focuses on “single points of identity, such as class and gender, rather than a more complex and real interconnectedness of a person’s identity and their assumptions about the world” (p. 144). Nevertheless, as a diligent student of qualitative research, I have written a statement in which I examined my insider–outsider status in relation to my study topic and population as a way to practice reflexivity (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). I am an insider because I shared the experience of teaching adult ESL with my participants. I am an outsider because unlike “white, predominately middle-class, and monolingual” (Sparks, 2001, p. 24) teachers often found in these classrooms, I am a non-native English-speaking foreigner. I established a dual insider/outsider identity for myself prior to entering data collection. But when I started reading these email threads between me and my participants while putting interviewing recording as my background music, I quickly realized that my positionality did not exist prior to my encounter with my participants. Rather, I as a researcher was made in this process, in my phone call with a pastor, in my email with a volunteer teacher, and in my interactions with my advisor. The making of the researcher I was situational and relational. My subjectivity is “a quintessence that is constantly changing” (Cihelkova, 2013, p. 3). I wondered whether I have failed the subjectivity statement, or the subjectivity statement failed me. My subjectivity was mediated by digital tools as well. While reading and cutting the responses from the participants, a message auto generated by Microsoft Outlook caught my attention. “EXTERNAL SENDER, PROCEED CAUTIOUSLY” was displayed at the beginning of every email I received, which I never noticed before. I have been treating digital tools in qualitative research as “neutral, invisible, or ignorable” (Paulus et al., 2017, p. 753). I was amazed by the contrast of color and tone here. Everything from me was black and white and written in the nicest and politest way possible. Then, I received a warning sign in red. It was in the color of passion and desire, a longing for closeness and interaction. Maybe I was carefully looked after the whole time without my knowing. It was in the color of danger and aggression, warning me to fear the unknown. If I were to pay attention to the warnings from Microsoft Outlook, would my research go differently or even become better? It seemed that Microsoft Outlook was interacting with me in my data collection in ways I was not anticipating. By constantly offering me warning and care as I entered the unknown, it was actively participating in the practice of knowledge production.

Zoom was another mediator in my data collection. I turned on my camera for every interview I conducted. Some participants did not turn their camera on. I didn’t really have a preference whether they showed their face or not. I wanted to ensure they felt comfortable. However, the contrasts of a human face and a blank headshot reminded me of the different positions researchers and participants occupied in the research process. The participants are unseen and anonymous. The researchers are seen and identifiable. Although I was collecting data from others, I felt I was more seen than the participants. To illustrate this contrast, I captured some screenshots of myself from each interview video. I found myself massing, or worse, hoarding the screenshots. Hoarding data is the practice of “selfishness, anxiety, a refusal to share or let go” (Holbrook & Pourchier, 2014, p. 758). While laying these screenshots on top of each other, their stories became mine. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmingly exposed for my narcissism. I was being responsible through the paternalistic act of protecting participant anonymity and reducing risks at all costs (Hewitt, 2007). I was also being irresponsible because I did not attempt to “move beyond duty, reflexivity, IRB guidelines, or protection of human subjects” (Koro-Ljungberg, 2010, p. 605). Has this dissertation been an act of self-absorption all along? Maybe my subjectivity statement did not fail me because I have turned this whole dissertation into my subjectivity statement. And I began dreaming that one day my work would be published and people would start citing me. Who are they? Why do they care? What points are they trying to make? They might agree with me, challenge me, or critique me, all for something that was never mine while being all about me. And this was when I temporarily concluded the making of this collage.

A Nonconclusion

Davis and Butler-Kisber (1999) wrote that

the resulting image [from collage] may seem so intimate or interior that analysis must be deferred indefinitely, and then one can only infer indirectly and anecdotally that the process of collage-making actually altered the thinking and feeling of the artist. (p. 16)

Three years after the making of this collage, I still feel that this is an unfinished project because “the work of a collage practice is open-ended” (Vaughan, 2005, p. 41). The process of creating this collage deepened my understanding of my data collection experience during the pandemic in an unexpected way and revealed knowledge and learning that were not previously acknowledged (Roberts & Woods, 2018). But it does not produce a definitive answer. I have revisited this collage on multiple occasions, and it went through “successive and multiple interpretations over time” (Davis & Butler-Kisber, 1999, p. 16). These occasions included a presentation at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, a slide in my job talk for a faculty position of qualitative research, and a prompt for discussion on researcher reflexivity in a qualitative research fieldwork class. When conducted successfully, an arts-based research project can become “more felt collectively than individuality” (Freeman, 2017, p. 82). On every occasion, the collage prompted meaningful dialogues between me and the audience and created new and multiple understandings on the topic.

Making, writing, and reflecting on this collage was much messier than I expected, similar to my dissertation process. It feels like lying at this point to write a conclusion because there might never be one. Just as Holbrook and Pourchier (2014) described in their collage process, “we hope to move constantly in questions” (p. 762). Returning to the vignette I offered at the beginning of this article, in those moments I relied on the completeness of my data collection to demonstrate that the study is valid, and therefore, I am valid. Completeness signifies closure and singularity. This collage afforded me a more expansive understanding of my experience that was filled with multiplicity and complexity. I was especially surprised to see the multiple pairs of polarities I experienced in my data collection as while as the making of this collage: the contrast between linearity and chaos, between passion and anger, and between responsibility and irresponsibility. Koro-Ljungberg (2010) wrote that researchers work “in the passage between valid and invalid research without knowing where to go and without ever completing valid research projects” (p. 605). What enabled my data collection and making of this collage was not completeness nor closures, but the collective in-betweenness. It is refreshing to thinking about scholarly practice as working on the margins and coming to the unknown. There is no closure, only hope and possibility ahead of me.

Author Biography

Beixi Li is an assistant professor of Evaluation, Measurement and Research at Western Michigan University. She received her Ph.D. in Learning, Leadership and Organization Development from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include adult learning and development, teaching qualitative research, and methodological innovation in qualitative inquiry.