Issue 25	Summer 1999

Social Research Update is published quarterly by the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, England. Subscriptions for the hardcopy version are free to researchers with addresses in the UK. Apply by email to sru@soc.surrey.ac.uk.

The Use of Vignettes in Qualitative Research

Christine Barter is an NSPCC research fellow with the University of Luton. She has previously worked on a range of projects concerning the experiences of children and young people. At present she is involved in a study of violence between young people in children’s homes, funded by the ESRC.

Emma Renold has just completed her PhD on an ethnographic exploration into the construction of children’s gender and sexual identities. She is employed by the NSPCC as a research assistant working on the ‘violence in children’s homes’ project and is writing a literature review on the sexual exploitation of children.

• Vignettes may be used for three main purposes in social research: to allow actions in context to be explored; to clarify people’s judgements; and to provide a less personal and therefore less threatening way of exploring sensitive topics.
• In qualitative research, vignettes enable participants to define the situation in their own terms.
• A number of guidelines on how to use vignettes effectively can be distilled from the literature and these are listed and explained in this Update.

There are few detailed accounts about the use of vignettes, particularly within qualitative research and as a complementary method with other data collection techniques. Nevertheless, the literature is clear about what constitute vignettes. Finch (1987:105) describes them as “short stories about hypothetical characters in specified circumstances, to whose situation the interviewee is invited to respond”. Although she is describing their use within a quantitative paradigm, others offer similar definitions of their use within qualitative research:

Short scenarios in written or pictorial form, intended to elicit responses to typical scenarios (Hill 1997:177).

Concrete examples of people and their behaviours on which participants can offer comment or opinion (Hazel 1995:2)

Stories about individuals, situations and structures which can make reference to important points in the study of perceptions, beliefs and attitudes (Hughes 1998:381)

The vignette technique is a method that can elicit perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes from responses or comments to stories depicting scenarios and situations.

Vignettes are employed in different ways and for different purposes. Some of the major differences are: whether they are used as a self-contained method or an adjunct to other research techniques; how the story is presented; at what stage in the data collection process they are introduced; and how responses are structured. Nevertheless, vignettes generally fulfil three main purposes:

1. interpretation of actions and occurrences that allows situational context to be explored and influential variables to be elucidated;
2. clarification of individual judgements, often in relation to moral dilemmas;
3. discussion of sensitive experiences in comparison with the ‘normality’ of the vignette.

Using vignettes within the qualitative paradigm

Ice breaker

Employing vignettes as an ice breaker at the beginning of an interview can facilitate a discussion around participants’ opinions and the terms they use (Hazel 1995:2). It can also be a good way of developing rapport by making them feel at ease. However, where the main aim of the research is to explore participants’ own definitions and evaluations, caution should be exercised in case the vignette forecloses areas by channelling participants’ responses.

Tapping general attitudes and beliefs

Vignettes have been used to elicit cultural norms derived from respondents’ attitudes and beliefs about a specific situation. Finch (1987) explores the merits of tapping into the general imagery of respondents, especially when using more than one vignette and varying the story with respect to age, gender, ethnicity, etc. Vignettes have also been used to explore participants’ ethical frameworks and moral codes. Wade (1999), for example, used vignettes to explore the ethical frameworks informing children’s thinking about issues such as the family. Neale’s (1999) research into post-divorce family life used vignettes as a useful way of exploring young people’s moral codes and their contingent status within different contexts. <>br

Multi-method approach

Vignettes have been widely used as a complementary technique alongside other data collection methods (see Hazel 1995; Hughes 1998). They can be employed either to enhance existing data or to generate data not tapped by other research methods (such as observation or interviews). With regard to the former, MacAuley (1996) sought to explore children’s perceptions and experiences of long-term foster care, using vignettes, unfinished sentences, postal boxes, response cards, games and other visual stimuli to achieve an ‘insider’ position on children’s perceptions and value systems. Wade (1999) employed vignettes following individual interviews in her study about children’s perceptions of the family. She selected stories on topics that had not been covered in the interview or which would benefit from further exploration. Barter and Renold (1999), in their work on violence between young people in residential children’s homes, also used vignettes in conjunction with semi-structured interviews. They routinely asked all participants to respond to a range of selected vignettes, regardless of whether they had disclosed a similar situation in the interview. In this way, a systematic comparison of individual responses to different behaviours could be generated.

Sensitive topics

Vignettes can be useful in exploring potentially sensitive topics that participants might otherwise find difficult to discuss (Neale 1999). As commenting on a story is less personal than talking about direct experience, it is often viewed by participants as being less threatening. Vignettes also provide the opportunity for participants to have greater control over the interaction by enabling them to determine at what stage, if at all, they introduce their own experiences to illuminate their abstract responses.

Comparing perceptions of disparate groups

Vignettes also offer the possibility of examining different groups’ interpretations of a ‘uniform’ situation. In their children’s homes research, Barter and Renold (1999) use vignettes to explore young people’s, residential care workers’ and managers’ evaluations and perceptions concerning different forms of violence between children. Responses were then analysed to reveal the level of harmony or discord between adult and child evaluations, thus providing benchmarks for understanding differences in interpretation.

Closing the interview

Some researchers have used vignettes because they offer a way of winding down the interview and broadening the focus from personal experiences to more abstract issues. This can be particularly useful when highly sensitive topics are under discussion (Wade 1999, Rahman 1996).

Focus Groups

Vignettes can be used with participants individually or within a ‘focus’ group, a method that is becoming increasingly popular with social researchers (see Wilkinson 1998). However, little has been written about the use of vignettes in groups, although it is often used as a warm-up exercise to get participants to start talking to each other. Maclean (1999), exploring children’s perspectives on the work-family interface, commented that it encouraged even the quietest group member to voice an opinion.

Methodological challenges

Implementation of vignettes

• Stories must appear plausible and real to participants (Neff 1979). Some researchers have constructed their vignettes around actual experiences, either directly, for example by using situations provided by participants in the pilot stage of the research (Barter and Renold 1999), or indirectly, such as using agony aunt letters in teenage magazines (Harden 1999). In our work we found that young people were particularly keen to participate when they knew that the stories were based on anonymised situations that other young people in children’s homes had experienced. However, it is important to remember that telling participants that a potentially upsetting scenario is based on a real experience may be distressing, especially if the participant is in a similar position.
• Stories need to avoid depicting eccentric characters and disastrous events, and should instead reflect ‘mundane’ occurrences (Finch 1987; Hughes 1998), although Finch also states that in some circumstances it can be advantageous to incorporate some ‘unusual occurrences’ into the story line. Indeed, Hazel (1995) argues, writing specifically about engaging with children and young people, that the more inappropriate or controversial the behaviour featured in the vignette, the more confident participants will feel about offering a response.
• Vignettes need to contain sufficient context for respondents to have an understanding about the situation being depicted, but be vague enough to ‘force’ participants to provide additional factors which influence their decisions. West (1982, cited in Finch 1987) states that in relation to a non-directional application of this technique ‘fuzziness is strength’, as ambiguity is a positive virtue, since it leaves space for participants to define the situation in their own terms.
• Participant’s ability to engage with the story may be enhanced if they have personal experience of the situation described.
• Vignettes must be presented in an appropriate format, and this may be particularly important for research with children and young people. While written narratives are the most common, vignettes have also been presented on videotape (Cohen and Staryer 1996, Leierer et al 1996), computers (Stolte 1994, Vitoritch and Tyrell 1995), and through music and music videos (Peterson and Pfost 1989).
• Participants may initially provide socially desirable responses and only after probing will they reveal how they truly believe they would respond to the situation. Thus some studies ask participants to describe how they feel the person in the story would act and why, and then how they would respond and why. If the character behaves in a socially unacceptable way, by reducing the pressure to provide socially desirable responses participants can be allowed the ‘freedom’ to express how they think they would actually respond in that situation .
• It is important that the stories presented in the vignettes are readily understood, are internally consistent and not too complex. Finch found that more than three changes to a story line was often too confusing for participants to remember. However, the number of vignettes used and the level of detail presented seem largely dependent on the particular aims of the project.
• In some circumstances it may be desirable to include a control vignette to see if any significant differences emerge. Miller-Perrin, Wurtele and Kondrick (1990) looked at abused and non-abused children’s conceptual systems relating to personal body safety and included a control about a road traffic accident. Although they found significant differences with respect to body space, there were none in relation to the control.

Summary

Further Reading

Bibliography

Social Research Update is published by:

Edited by Nigel Gilbert.

Summer 1999 © University of Surrey

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