27 - Perspective Narrative Analysis: analysing data creatively within a participatory research group

Summary

Introduction

This chapter describes how a participatory research group – named Fizzacc after the initials of our names – approached analysing our data. Fizzacc is a neurodiverse group that comprised six autistic girls between the ages of 13 and 18 and a postgraduate researcher with 20 years’ experience as a secondary school teacher. It was created to explore three research questions:

• • What do autistic girls feel are the barriers to successful transition from primary to secondary school?

• • How can creative data collection and analysis methods promote the voices of autistic girls?

• • What are the challenges and benefits of including autistic girls in participatory research?

The focus here is on how we used creative data analysis methods within a participatory framework to explore autistic girls’ transition experiences. The process involved developing stories describing events from two different perspectives: a first- person narrative to reflect the lived experiences of the group and a third-person account of the same event. A series of questions and talking points were also included to further explore what the data meant to us.

Challenges of data analysis within a participatory research framework

The creative analysis process in the research came about as a way to address the challenges of including data analysis as part of a participatory research project. Participatory research refers to the practice of meaningfully including the community affected by the research in the research process (Fletcher- Watson et al, 2019). It aims to address the imbalance of power between researchers and the researched, and to draw on the wisdom of those with lived experiences to strengthen research findings (Pellicano, 2020). Although participatory research is increasing in popularity in some areas of study, there remains a disparity in how much those with lived experience are involved in the research beyond the data collection phase. This is particularly apparent in how group members are involved in the process of analysing data.

Analysis can be particularly challenging when working within a research team that includes members without training or experience in research practices. This is common in participatory research, which often includes researchers from marginalised or seldom- heard communities.