Digital storytelling methodologies: Recommendations for a participatory approach to engaging underrepresented communities in counseling psychology research.

Abstract

While counseling psychologists made substantial proposals to advance qualitative research since the special issue on related methods was published 15-years ago (Haverkamp, Morrow, & Ponterotto, 2005), the field continues to demonstrate an overreliance on quantitative methods. Though important for producing knowledge we can depend on, excessive use of these methods poses a barrier for counseling psychologists to address the needs of the communities that are at the core of our discipline's valuesthose who are marginalized and underserved in society. In alignment with our values of social justice, advocacy, and empowerment, we propose counseling psychologists adopt a methodology within a critical paradigm to better address issues of inequality and inequity when working with underrepresented communities, such as digital storytelling. Rooted in a movement to increase access to art for marginalized communities in the 1970s and 1980s, digital storytelling is an arts-based research methodology that captures first-person narrated accounts of peoples' lives through the use of stories, photos, and videos, and empowers communities to be a part of research to create social change. We provide recommendations for using digital storytelling in counseling psychology research as outlined through 5 phases, including Phase I) digital storytelling's critical paradigm, Phase II) project development, Phase III) implementation, Phase IV) data analysis, and Phase V) dissemination. While doing so, we draw on examples from 2 digital storytelling projects we are familiar with, Immigrant Stories and OrigiNatives, providing a framework for a digital frontier in counseling psychology research. Public Significance StatementThis article outlines recommendations for using digital stories as a collaborative method for conducting research with individuals from marginalized and underserved communities. Specifically, these recommendations are intended to assist counseling psychologists in using digital storytelling to address inequities and inequalities in a manner consistent with the field's values.

The qualitative imagination in counseling psychology: Enhancing methodological rigor across methods.

“…Accordingly, he challenges readers to consider how their extant practices reproduce colonial violence and how psychologists working across modes of empirical inquiry and employing heterogenous methods may all embrace decolonization as a methodological imperative. Fish and Syed (2021) continue the focus on Indigenous communities but turn toward digital approaches to gathering and sharing stories. Noting the links between digital storytelling (e.g., digital photos, videos, etc.)…”

“…In this vision, our skill and role are as much to listen and hear deeply as to analyze and interpret (McClelland, 2017). This vision is illustrated in Fish and Syed's (2021) digital storytelling project, which shifted the locus of representational power to their participants, who decided how and what to narrate about their lives. Their Indigenous community collaborators' contributions to the project were the act of self-representation, unfiltered by the researchers' lenses.…”

“…The manuscripts showcased in this issue are diverse in scope and reflect methodological pluralism across qualitative and mixed methods. Indeed, the conceptual and practical distance between the approaches used in some of the articles in this special issue, such as Jackson et al’s (2021) intersectional experience sampling approach and Fish and Syed’s (2021) digital storytelling, may be greater than the distance between these approaches and some quantitative methods. Yet these articles are all linked by a commitment to accurate, richly textured, and contextualized representations of participants’ lived experiences and a critical ethos, analytic, and ethics.…”

“…Fish and Syed (2021) continue the focus on Indigenous communities but turn toward digital approaches to gathering and sharing stories. Noting the links between digital storytelling (e.g., digital photos, videos, etc.)…”

Towards a Haudenosaunee developmental science: Perspectives from the Two Row Wampum

“…Developmental science privileges (post)positivistic research paradigms despite their limited ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches-and total lack of axiological consideration (Wilson, 2001). Other mainstream research paradigms (e.g., constructivism, critical theory) are more flexible, have a greater axiological orientation and lend themselves better to qualitative research but are less prevalent and still reflect mainstream ontologies and epistemologies (Fish & Syed, 2021). Although Indigenous developmental scientists gravitate towards these paradigms (Whitesell, Sarche, Keane, Mousseau, & Kaufman, 2018), the dearth of empirical research that is actually published on Indigenous development in developmental journals is (post)positivistic in nature (e.g., Cvencek, Fryberg, Covarrubias, & Meltzoff, 2018).…”