The Writing Processes and Importance of Quality Images for Self-Discovery in Poetic Inquiry

Phenomenological Sources

Poetic inquiry is a term used to group a range of different ways of using poetry writing for research purposes. Whether this form of research is used for individuals or groups, the core argument for poetry writing as a research method is that it allows the writer and poetry reading audience to achieve some degree of insight into personal experience (Hanauer, 2010, 2021; Prendergast, 2009). From a methodological perspective poetic inquiry sits between techniques found in the discipline of creative writing and the research aims of phenomenology (Hanauer, 2021). Phenomenology developed within the philosophical orientation of Husserl positions the main object of inquiry for research to be the ways in which an individual’s consciousness experiences phenomena in the world (Giorgi et al., 2017). Over the years, the methods of achieving this objective have changed and developed even within the periods of Husserl’s own work. Early approaches, as outlined by Husserl, involved the individual delimiting their personal beliefs and assumptions – termed epoché (suspension of judgement) – in a series of iterations until the essence of the phenomenon in consciousness is explicated (Hopkins, 2010). This method aimed to enable the possibility of observing one’s experience beyond pre-existing beliefs and personally and socially mediated interpretations (Butler, 2016). As argued by Findlay (2012) Husserl recognized the difficulty of this process and assumed that some degree of residue from the a priori consciousness would remain.

Subsequent philosophers such as Heidegger and Gadamer questioned an individual’s ability to bracket one’s assumptions and beliefs proposing that one could never overcome the situatedness of one’s being in the world (Horrigan-Kelly et al., 2016; van Manen, 2007). Utilizing a hermeneutic approach, these philosophers proposed that the experience of the world was an active interpretive act and as such the processes of understanding the world need to be in themselves explicated. Instead of bracketing, it was proposed that the assumptions be explicated by the individual and then revised in a series of cycles that move from a holistic understanding of experience to an analysis of the components of this experience (van Manen, 2007).

This phenomenological-hermeneutic research agenda was later critiqued and further developed by qualitative researchers in the 21^st century. A range of different approaches such as Lifeworld research (Ashworth, 2015), Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009), Post-Intentional Phenomenology (Vagle, 2014) and Micro-Phenomenology (Petitmengin, 2006) or Neurophenomenology (Petitmengin, 2017) were proposed and developed. Methodologically all these versions of phenomenology involve a transition from the explication of an abstracted essence of an experience to providing a socially and historically contextualized understanding of personal experience (Eatough & Smith, 2017). The methodological practices of reflection, reliving and direct questioning were developed for the qualitative phenomenological interview to achieve this situated understanding in which a participant has the “felt-sense” of an experience (Steenberg, 2019, p. 204).

Like phenomenology, the arts-based, poetry writing researcher is interested in expressing, investigating, explicating, understanding and learning from personal lived experience (Elbelazi & Alharbi, 2019; Hanauer, 2012, 2020; Iida, 2018; Lapidus et al., 2013; Liao, 2018; Park, 2013). Poetic research writing, as a phenomenological research method, involves directing a writer-researcher to produce “individual, subjective, emotional, linguistically-negotiated understanding of personal experience” which constitutes “a deliberative account of the writer’s autobiographical experience” (Hanauer, 2010, p. 137). Poetic inquiry claims to facilitate a process of self-understanding in which a writer-researcher gains deeper understanding of their own socially and historically situated experience through writing (Hanauer, 2021).

Poetic Inquiry

Poetic inquiry is a member of a family of ABR methods that involve poetry writing. The earliest documented usage of this research approach can be found in the work of Muriel Rukeyser who in 1938 wrote up her ethnographic interview data on West Virginian miners who were dying of lung cancer as a long poem (Kaufman & Herzog, 2005). Rukeyser had social-activist aims in presenting her research in poetic form in that she wanted to generate understanding and empathy towards the dying victims of extreme corporate exploitation and apathy. Towards the end of the 20^th century, this approach of collecting qualitative data and then rewriting it as a poem was also conducted by Laurel Richardson (1990, 1997, 2003). Richardson’s work, constituted within a poststructuralist, feminist critique of research, wished to move away from the objectification of participants and rather generate empathy towards the people who were interviewed and their life experiences. Both Rukeyser and Richardson used the forms of poetry to infuse their research outcomes with feeling in an attempt to engage audiences with the lives of the people they studied.

From the beginning of the 21^st century, in line with arts-based approaches to research, investigators began to use poetry writing not as a way of representing qualitative data that had been collected using more standard techniques of research, but rather as a method of data elicitation in itself (Barone & Eisner, 2012; McNiff, 2008, 2013). Researchers such as Langer and Furman (2004), Hanauer (2010) and Iida (2018) all utilized poetry writing as the mode of eliciting data from participants. This can take different forms. Prendergast (2009), in her introduction to an edited collection of poetic inquiries, proposes that poetic research can be divided into three forms: Vox Theoria – poetry written as a way of understanding existing disciplinary research; Vox Autobiographia/Autoethnographia – poetry written based upon a researcher’s field notes, journals, or other forms of autobiographical writing; and Vox Participare – poems written by participants or about participants. Hanauer (2021) offers his own taxonomy of poetry writing research consisting of three usages of poetry for research purposes: Poetic Inquiry where a group of participants are directed through a writing protocol to write poetry about their own personal experiences (Gallardo et al., 2009; Hanauer, 2010; Iida, 2018; Prendergast et al., 2009); Poetic Ethnography in which a poem is written using a participant’s words after a careful life interview technique is used to elicit the participant’s life experience of interest to the study (Elbelazi, 2017; Hanauer, 2012, 2013, 2014); Poetic Autoethnography in which the researcher-poet explores and explicates their own life experiences (Elbelazi & Alharbi, 2019; Hanauer, 2012, 2020; Iida, 2018).

While there are differences among these uses of poetry writing as a research method, there are some basic shared components. First the object of inquiry is the subjective consciousness of a personal experience and the way of accessing this consciousness is through a poetry writing process. Second, in line with current empirical understandings of the poetry writing process (Hanauer, 2010, 2023; Liu et al, 2015; Peskin & Ellenbogen, 2019; Schwartz, 1983), poetry writing is a two stage, recursive movement involving a free-flowing memory elicitation/automatic text generation stage followed by a cognitively engaged, revision/rewriting stage. These two stages of poetry writing are assumed to be recursive, moving from generating to repeatedly revising during a poetry writing process. In accordance with this model, the methodology that is employed, whether it is for the individual poet-researcher writing about their own experience, the participant who is interviewed and then has their interview written up as a poem, or for groups following a poetry writing protocol, involves a stage at which experience is elicited in writing and a stage in which revision is conducted. Finally, all the approaches specified above assume that poetry writing as a research method is designed to facilitate a process of self-discovery. It is this self-discovery that emerges through the protocols of poetic inquiry that support its claims as a research method.

The Writing Processes of Self-Discovery

Since self-discovery is central to the claims of ABR poetry writing, it is worth considering the research on writing for self-discovery. There are two bodies of scholarship that investigate this function of writing. Within the expressive writing for well-being paradigm (Pennebaker & Beale, 1986), there is extensive empirical data that writing can have a role in facilitating a process of self-understanding and self-discovery (Frattaroli, 2006; Hanauer, 2010; Kállay, 2015; Lepore & Kliewer, 2013; Pennebaker & Chung, 2007). The method of expressive writing involves an intervention in which every evening a participant writes about their “deepest thoughts and feelings” for four days without consideration of the structural aspects of writing (Pennebaker & Beale, 1986). In a large number of studies, a series of positive psychological and physical outcomes were found for this writing intervention. These include a reduction in hospital visits, physical ailments, breathing issues, fatigue and pain (Danoff-Burg et al., 2006; Hockemeyer & Smyth, 2002; McGuire et al., 2005; Norman et al., 2004; Rosenberg et al., 2002); and decreases in psychological distress, anxiety, depression suicidal thoughts and levels of grief (Antal & Range, 2005; Graf et al., 2008; Nishith et al., 2002; Range & Jenkins, 2010). This impressive set of outcomes is assumed to be the result of the ability of writing to allow the expression and disclosure of repressed thoughts (Lepore & Smyth, 2002), the ability of writing to lead to increased insight into personal experience (Pennebaker, 1993) and the way in which writing about an experience can provide a sense of control over that experience (Lepore et al., 2002).

While the research on expressive writing has established a value for writing and self-discovery and offered some broad theoretical explanation of how it might work, it has not really explained how self-discovery is enacted in writing. Research within the context of psycholinguistic, Composition studies has attempted to model this more specifically. Early scholarship on the writing process considered discovery to be the result from the cognitively engaging, rhetorical problem-solving aspects of writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Flower & Hayes, 1980; Galbraith, 2009). Specifically, the position proposed was that discovery emerged when expert readers were faced with a rhetorical task that required a solution. Flower and Hayes (1980) in their influential process model of writing situated discovery in the Revising component of writing and in relation to the processes of reformulation and revision. The Flower and Hayes model specifies that during revision, alternative ideas and enhanced clarity emerge concerning the topic of writing. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) in their two-process models of writing (Knowledge-Telling and Knowledge-Transforming) similarly situate the discovery process in the revision and problem-solving aspects of writing. In their description of the writing process, the evaluation of the writing content, the reformation of ideas and the revision of the text directed a process of discovery. For both Flower and Hayes (1980) and Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), discovery was solely situated in the cognitively engaged processes of revision and rewriting and not in the early stages of text generation.

A more recent model of writing, termed the dual-process model of discovery, has proposed that discovery is situated both in the generation processes and in the revision stages of writing (Galbraith, 1999, 2009; Galbraith & Baaijen, 2015). These researchers propose that there are two psychological mechanisms through which discovery occurs: the verbal reconstitution of episodic and autobiographical memories termed Knowledge Constituting; and the revision of generated text termed Knowledge Transforming. For the first mechanism, discovery emerges from the verbalization of existing memories that had not been fully expressed up until the point of writing. Through fast, relatively effortless, bursts of writing, episodic memory is expressed as generated text. The emergent text reconstitutes the sensory and non-verbal memory trace of an experience and thus facilitates a process of discovery. The second mechanism reflects the earlier research on the role of rhetorical problem solving. Through slow, effortful and cognitively engaged processes of evaluation, revision and manipulation of ideas, discoveries about the topic of the writing are made.

Recent research has investigated the hypotheses of the dual-process model of discovery in relation to poetic inquiry (Hanauer, 2022). The point of connection between the model proposed by Galbraith and Baaijen (2015) and poetic inquiry is the overlap between the processes of discovery in writing and the stages of writing in poetic inquiry. Empirical descriptions of poetry writing specify a two-stage process involving a generation stage and a revision stage (Hanauer, 2010, 2021, 2022; Liu et al, 2015; Peskin & Ellenbogen, 2019; Schwartz, 1983). Basically, these stages are parallel to the Knowledge Constituting and Knowledge Transforming mechanisms for facilitating discovery described in the dual-process model of discovery (Galbraith, 1999, 2009; Galbraith & Baaijen, 2015). Initial results on the processes of discovery in poetic inquiry suggest that poetic inquiry does indeed elicit high levels of cognitive insight and emotional clarity and that this result is only situated in the generation, Knowledge Constituting stage of poetry writing (Hanauer, 2022). The second poetry revision, Knowledge Transforming stage was found to reduce both cognitive insight and emotional clarity. As such, current research suggests that poetic inquiry can facilitate discovery through the psychological process of fast, relatively effortless reconstitution of episodic memory expression and not the actual writing and revision of a poem.

Research Overview and Questions

Existing prior research on the processes of discovery in poetic inquiry can be summarized as follows:

1. The protocol of poetic inquiry as enacted in Hanauer (2022) elicits high levels of cognitive insight and emotional clarity concerning a personal experience.

2. It is the initial process of memory elicitation in Hanauer’s (2022) poetic inquiry protocol that elicits these high levels of cognitive insight and emotional clarity.

3. The second poetic inquiry stage of poetic image generation and revision as enacted in Hanauer’s (2022) poetic inquiry protocol reduces cognitive insight and emotional clarity.

In line with the scientific principle that replicability is an important aspect of the rigor in scientific research, the current study replicates the Hanauer (2022) study. The current study revisits the two-stage process of Hanauer’s (2022) poetic inquiry protocol using the same measures of self-discovery (cognitive insight and emotional clarity) and analyses whether the same pattern of results in which it is only the memory elicitation stage of poetry writing that facilitates discovery are replicated. The current study also goes beyond prior research by considering the quality of the actual art product of the ABR poetic inquiry as a potential factor leading to discovery. The core idea here is that if the claim of poetic inquiry (or any other method of ABR) is that it is the production of an artistic artifact that facilitates self-discovery, then it is possible that the quality of the art has an influence with lower quality products not having the ability to fulfill the research aims of ABR.

This issue of quality has been raised in prior scholarship with several researchers specifying the importance of the quality of the artistic output for a study to actually be an ABR. Morris and Paris (2022) quote Chilton and Leavy’s (2014) criteria for establishing the value of an ABR study including “Aesthetic power: the quality of the artistic output to communicate meaning” (p. 101). For ABR to work, the aesthetic quality of the artistic output needs to be established. Other ABR researchers such as Lafrenière and Cox (2012) and Finley (2008) have similarly argued that the artistic output in ABR must have the quality to communicate with a broad audience. Specifically, in relation to ABR uses of poetry, Lafrenière and Cox (2012) have pointed out that since novices are participating in the artistic production of ABR, there is a degree of skepticism over their ability to actually produce a poem. As such they specify that within ABR, artistic criteria specific to the art form need to be assessed.

The current study addresses two main research questions:

1. What are the writing processes through which poetic inquiry facilitates a process of self-discovery?

   1. To what extent does the memory elicitation (Knowledge Constituting) writing process elicit high levels of insight and emotional clarity?

   2. To what extent does the poetic image revision (Knowledge Transforming) writing process elicit high levels of insight and emotional clarity?

   3. Do insight and emotional clarity increase at the poetic image revision (Knowledge Transforming) stage following a memory elicitation (Knowledge Constituting) stage?

2. Does the quality of the arts-based product influence self-discovery?

   1. Are there differences in the degree of insight and emotional clarity for participants who produced different levels of poetic image quality?

Participants

Data was collected from the online participant resource Amazon MTurk. Amazon MTurk workers were paid $1.00 for participation in the survey. Participation was limited to adult, first language English speakers residing in the USA. 455 responses were recorded on the Amazon MTurk site. Each response was quality checked to make sure that the complete set of tasks was completed and that the respondent provided a personal experience and a poetic image as specified in the prompts. Of the 455 responses only 60 participants fulfilled the full requirements. Rejected responses either failed to do the complete set of tasks or the responses were generated by a computer bot or ChatGPT. Of the 60 accepted responses 34 were men and 26 were women. Ages ranged from 18–65 with a mean age of 28.3 and a standard deviation of 1.22. 56 of the participants were employed, 3 were unemployed and 1 was retired. 54 of the respondents had a college level education and 6 had completed high-school. 27 different states across the US were represented in this data set. All data was collected in accordance with the ethical requirements of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania IRB (#22-187).

Measurement Instruments

The same measures of self-discovery that were used in the Hanauer (2022) study, were employed in the current study. Self-discovery can be defined in relation to increases in cognitive and emotional understandings. The Grant et al. (2002) insight scales that were adapted for the Hanauer (2022) study were used in this study. The cognitive insight scales consist of the following items:

1. I have a clear idea about why I behaved the way I did in this experience

2. I understand this experience

3. I can make sense of this experience

In addition, Gratz and Roemer’s (2004) emotional clarity scales that were adapted and used in the Hanauer (2022) study were used in this study. The emotional clarity scales consist of the following items:

1. I know exactly how I am feeling about this event

2. I am clear about my feelings about this event

3. I have difficulty making sense out of my feelings about this event

4. I have no idea how I am feeling about this event

5. I am confused about how I feel about this event

Both sets of scales were psychometrically validated for dimensionality and reliability before usage in the Hanauer (2022) study. Reliability was calculated for the cognitive insight scales (Cronbach’s Apha = 0.861) and emotional clarity scales (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.83). Based on this analysis, these measures were considered to be reliable. All items were measured using 7-point, agreement-disagreement scales (1 = Strong Disagree; 7 = Strongly Agree) using a matrix-style format in the online Qualtrics survey service.

The emotional clarity scales and the cognitive insight scales both measure the degree to which a participant senses that they have an understanding and have made some degree of “sense” from their described experience (Park, 2010). Emotional clarity and cognitive insight have been distinguished as separate options for meaning making in terms of personal experience, with cognition focusing more on the processing of information and emotional processing focusing on feeling and defining one’s automatic emotional responses (Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 2001; Park, 2010).

Procedure

The overall design for this study followed the guidelines of Hanauer’s (2022) study. The same protocol for poetic inquiry and measures of self-discovery were used here. Figure 1 schematically presents the overview of implementation of the poetic inquiry protocol and the data collection process. As can be seen in Figure 1, the poetic inquiry process was conducted in two stages and self-discovery data was collected after each stage. The first stage involved a significant memory elicitation and note-taking task. The specific prompt used was as follows:

Figure 1

The second stage involved a poetic image generation and revision task. The specific prompt used was as follows:

Following each stage of the poetic inquiry protocol, the insight and emotional clarity scales were presented to the participants. There was a difference in the current protocol to that of the Hanauer (2022) study. In that study, only 3 minutes was allotted for each stage on writing. However, in the current study, timing was not controlled and participants could take as much or as little time as they desired to complete each stage of writing.

The full process of the study was conducted in one sitting through a Qualtrics survey. A description of the study was posted on the Amazon MTurk webpage and members were invited to participate. Following consent to participate, members were directed to a Qualtrics survey. Upon completion of the consent, participants were directed through the two-stage writing and scale response process. All data was collected and downloaded from the Qualtrics survey service. Once responses had been vetted for the human completion of both tasks, participants were paid $1.00 for their work. The average time of completion was 14.3 minutes (M = 860 seconds; SD = 96 seconds).

Analysis

The current study involved the evaluation of the levels of cognitive insight and emotional clarity that were elicited during the completion of the two-stage poetic inquiry writing protocol used in this study. As a first stage, descriptive statistics were analyzed at each stage of the process. In order to simplify the degree of emotional clarity elicited, the three negatively worded items were reversed so that higher values reflected higher levels of emotional clarity. Secondly, in order to consider whether the second stage of writing enhanced the processes of self-discovery, a repeated measures (Stage 1 – Experience Elicitation; Stage 2 – Poetic Image Generation and Revision) comparative analysis was conducted. An evaluation of the normality of the variables revealed that they were not normally distributed. Accordingly, the non-parametric, repeated measures Friedman test was used to compare differences between the initial and second stage of the writing in relation to levels of cognitive insight and emotional clarity.

The current study was also interested in whether there were differences in the degree of insight and emotional clarity for participants who produced different levels of poetic image quality. In order to conduct this comparative analysis, it was necessary first to analyze the quality of the poetic images. The quality of the poetic image was analyzed using a rubric with three criteria (specificity, relatedness and depth of sensory information) and a simple 1–3 point rating system. Figure 2 presents the rubric that was used and the adjacent rating system. The process of using the rubric involved rating each of the three criteria (specificity, relatedness and depth of sensory information) 1 to 3 and then counting the total score for that image. The final quality of each poetic image was defined according to total final score. Poetic images with a rating of 1–5 were considered low quality; a rating of 6–7 was considered mid quality; and a rating of 8–9 was considered high quality. Table 1 presents examples of poetic images, their ratings and associated level of quality.

Figure 2

In order to ensure the validity of the evaluation, all poetic images were read in relation to the elicited experience presented by each participant in the first stage of writing. This was to ensure that the generated image emerged from the freewriting concerning the chosen experience. All the poetic images were rated by two raters working independently. Overall, there was 89% agreement between reviewers using this rating rubric. All disagreements between raters were resolved through discussion.

Once quality had been established for each poetic image, comparative analyses were conducted comparing the three levels of poetic image quality (low, mid and high) at the elicitation and revision stages of poetic inquiry writing. The non-parametric, Kruskal-Wallis H-test followed by pairwise Dwass-Steel-Critchlow-Fligner comparisons were used to establish systematic differences and to consider where any differences were situated.

The final analysis that was conducted explored the relationship between the word counts, time spent at each stage of the writing process and the analysis of the quality of the poetic image. Word counts and time spent on tasks were calculated for each participant’s response at each stage of writing. Spearman Rho rank order correlations were calculated to consider any associations between these variables. All analyses were conducted with SPSS V.28.

Limitations

As with all studies, the current investigation has limitations. The two most important limitations of the current study are that only one specific poetic inquiry protocol was studied in the manuscript and the number of participants was relatively small (n = 60). As such, the results presented here need to be seen as provisional. Far larger samples and a much wider set of poetic inquiry protocols need to be evaluated before more substantive claims can be made about the ability of poetic inquiry to direct processes of self-discovery.