Arts-based research: definition, procedures & application (Dr Patricia Leavy)

Arts-based research is a structured approach in which researchers adapt creative arts methods to generate, analyze, interpret, and/or represent research data—using any art form from poetry and fiction to film, music, dance, and visual art. The core payoff is that it can surface kinds of data that traditional interviews or surveys may miss, especially when participants struggle to express experiences in straightforward verbal terms. That matters because many research questions—around identity, belonging, trauma, bullying, or self-esteem—often live in emotion and symbolism as much as in facts.

Patricia Leavy frames arts-based research broadly: the arts can be used for one phase of inquiry or throughout the entire project. In data collection, she distinguishes between adding art as a prompt (for example, photo elicitation) and using art creation itself as data generation. A school-based example illustrates the difference: instead of only conducting interviews about students’ school experiences, researchers asked students to create artwork representing those experiences. The resulting artwork was then analyzed as part of the study, with follow-up interviews used to elicit verbal context. Leavy argues that this kind of method can reveal “invisible” data—such as a student drawing a cropped face to express feeling “closed in and boxed in”—that might never emerge in a standard focus group depending on the questions asked.

Dissemination is another major theme. Arts-based research is often used to represent findings for audiences beyond academia, but Leavy emphasizes it can be used across all phases, including interpretation and presentation. She notes that arts-based outputs can take many forms: novels, plays, performed ethno-drama/ethno-theater, or published scripts, alongside conventional scholarly articles in arts-based journals. The key advantage is audience reach. Leavy pushes back on the assumption that academic journal articles are widely read, calling the journal system “broken” and describing a reality where most articles have only a handful of readers inside academia. In that context, arts-based work becomes a deliberate strategy for accessibility—without abandoning rigor.

The conversation also turns to why art can have lasting impact. Leavy and the interviewer connect emotional engagement to memory and learning: people remember stories and characters in ways that dry academic prose often doesn’t. She cites neuroscience research on reading fiction—specifically work on Jane Austen novels—suggesting that reading can activate sensory-related brain processes and that these effects can persist for days, unlike non-fiction prose. Her personal experience with publishing arts-based novels reinforces the point: readers report emotional identification with characters and describe behavior changes years later, including stories about domestic violence, depression, and healing.

Overall, the central message is practical: arts-based research isn’t about replacing rigor with creativity; it’s about choosing methods that can reach human experience more directly. Leavy’s advice to students and researchers is to pursue work that touches their own heart and keeps them engaged enough to forget lunch—because that engagement is often what allows art to move others, whether the audience is small or eventually much larger.