'I wanna tell you a story': Exploring the application of vignettes in qualitative research with children and young people

“…common limitations associated with the use of vignettes, (1) having a large discrepancy between reality and the vignette, and (2) respondents marking socially desirable responses (Barter & Renold, 2000), these vignettes were incorporated into sexuality education programs at the same institution.”

“…young people’s views on sensitive topics such as peer violence in children’s homes (Barter and Renold 2000), parental alcohol misuse (Hill 2015), as well as children’s experiences of the professional response to domestic violence (Barter and Renold 2000; Radford et al. 2011; Stanley et al. 2012).”

“This research method contextualises issues and fosters engagement with a potentially controversial policy area (Barter and Renold 2000).”

“Vignettes are a well-established method for engendering discussions on sensitive topics in group and one-to-one interviews as they allow for a distancing between topic and personal experience while opening up a space for discussion that facilities the drawing on of personal experience (Barter and Renold, 2000).”

“…and potential observer effects, some researchers believed the vignettes are more closely approximate the decision-making situation in real life than would the self-report methods such as interviews or questionnaires, and consequently advanced in the external validity (Barter and Renold, 2000).”

“Although vignettes may lack a degree of ecological validity, they are a useful method for investigating theoretical predictions and establishing causality in an experimental approach, before turning to naturalistic data where it is more difficult to establish causality (Barter and Renold 2000; O’Dell et al. 2013).”

“The research was based in qualitative, narrative approaches to in-depth analysis of vignettes (Barter & Renold, 2000; Renold, 2002).”

“…hosted at http://online.sagepub.com Renzetti, 1990), and a small but important literature exists on conducting research on sensitive topics (Barter & Renold, 2000; Cowles, 1988; Jansen & Davis, 1998; Lee & Renzetti, 1990; Robertson, 2000; Winkler, 1995).”

“Few methodological papers examining the use of vignettes in social research and their application in a qualitative paradigm exist (Barter and Renold 2000).”

“Such strategies provide a helpful way to start speaking about the focus topic (Barter & Reynold, 2000; Crouch & Wright, 2004; Mauthner, 1997).”

“To aid this, we invited reflections through the use of ‘creative non-fiction vignettes’ (Barter and Renold 2000), as commenting on the stories of others is often deemed less threatening and encourages participation.”

“The use of vignettes has been effective for the exploration of sensitive topics and adolescents’ subjective definitions (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“We chose this experimental design because it allowed us to systematically vary different factors that could impact mothers' and children's perceptions (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“In this study it was important to understand the coaches’ meanings and interpretations (e.g. appraisals) that are used in reaching outcomes (e.g. outcome on PWB) and this type of creative non-fiction offers one opportunity to illuminate and explore these complex processes (Barter and Renold 2000).”

“…vignette is a suitable venue by which to present our findings as its narrative style offers the opportunity for diverse interpretations of an event (Barter and Renold, 2000), and so while our analysis focuses on children’s resilience, agency, and digital play during the pandemic, our findings as…”

“With children, vignettes compensate for their lack of experience through proxy experiences of the story characters (Barter & Renold, 2000; O’Dell et al., 2012).”

“Vignettes were adopted due to their effectiveness in collecting qualitative data from younger children (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“It allows participants to reflect upon and include personal experiences, as well as opening up the discussion and broadening the focus of the interview to more abstract experiences (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“Vignettes are short (200-300 words) stories which help to initiate discussions regarding abstract themes (Finch, 1987); they provide an external and concrete base on which to focus discussions (Hazel, 1995; Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“…and self-reported surveys, possible discordance between the actual versus reported or imagined behaviour of the participants remains an issue (Hughes, 1998; Lucas, Collins, & Langdon, 2009), as does the possibility that respondents may provide socially desirable responses (Barter & Renold, 1999).”

“The vignettes were designed to probe the child’s own animal cruelty incident, allowing sensitive topics to be explored in a less personal way (Barter & Renold, 2000; Palaiologou, 2017).”

“The storytelling nature of the vignette approach is relaxing, interesting and can reduce children’s feeling of being overburdened by the interview process (Barter and Renold, 2000).”

“Vignettes are very flexible “tools” (Barter and Renold 2000), that allow in-depth analysis of decision-making processes, and enable researchers to overcome the barrier of confidentiality, which can be an important constraint when interviewing law enforcement officers.”

“It has been used to study extensive topics in a wide range of disciplines (Barter and Renold 2000), such as to examine: college women’s reproductive values (Straits 1985); awareness and attitudes of older adults towards the use of formal services (Schoenberg and Ravdal 2000); teachers’ perceptions…”

“We used vignettes in our focus group interviews as a tool for opening up conversations and broaden the mutual understanding within the group (Barter & Renold, 2000; Frydendal Nielsen & Thing, 2017a; Heldbjerg, Damgaard-Hansen, Hansen, & Kråkenes, 2009; Sandvik, Strandbu, & Loland, 2017).”

“Vignettes have been used successfully to describe equine welfare [20], and are recommended as they secure respondent engagement [21] and may avoid the ethical issues linked to sensitive issues [22] and reporting bias, in which respondents give answers sought by the researchers [23].”

“Previously framed as an ethically sensitive approach (Barter & Renold, 2000), vignette methodology allows researchers to discuss issues from a perspective that is non-personal and thus less threatening (Crafter et al., 2015).”

“Also, the use of the vignette technique allowed the participants to freely discuss the sensitive topics presented and facilitated interaction within the group (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“…between respondents and vignette characters can facilitate the unpacking of beliefs and perceptions, particularly in studies of sensitive phenomena (Barter & Reynold, 2000; Hughes, 1998; Schoenberg & Ravdal, 2000), and obtain information beyond the participants’ current personal situation (Finch,…”

“…as the stimulus material because stories that place an imaginary character in a concrete context allow researchers to explore what participants think about sensitive topics while disclosing as much or as little personal information as they feel fit (Barter and Reynold, 2000; O’Dell et al., 2012).”

“…proposed to be useful for ethically sensitive topics or potentially vulnerable participant groups because the research participant is able to control what personal information they disclose while still giving a personal viewpoint on the topic at hand (Barter & Renold, 2000; Kandemir & Budd, 2018).”

“A task-based activity using vignettes was undertaken as an ethically safe method to elicit the views and perspectives of children who took part in the study (Barter and Renold, 2000).”

“Barter and Renold (2000) summarised the bene fi ts of the vignette method by saying that it permits behaviors in context to be examined, uncovers one ’ s judgments, and offers a less personal and, thus, more comfortable method of discussing sensitive issues.”

“A collection of excellent reviews, namely Hughes (1998), Schoenberg and Ravdal (2000) and Barter and Renold (2000), contain interesting and valuable discussions on use of vignettes in research with young people.”

“Moreover, wording of written instruments can cause bias or cue a socially desirable response.(11,14) Consequently, vignettes incorporating visual experiences are proposed as a more sound methodology.”

“The short and colorful vignettes accelerate the participants’ understanding of the scenarios and generate interest of the participants to offer enough time for both researchers and participants to interact (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“The moderators initiated discussion topics on previously known issues and challenges that might arise for people born with ARM [4–6, 9, 23] through semi-structured openended questions (Appendix 1) and fictional case stories, so-called vignettes [24] (Appendix 2) for discussion enhancement.”

“Since young people sometimes struggle to express complicated understandings, we used creative non-fiction vignettes as a data collection method to aid reflection (see Barter and Renold, 2000).”

“Despite this limitation, we follow the view that vignettes offer researchers the opportunity to ‘manage the complexity’ of sociomaterial experiences by ‘isolating’ certain stories that do, when reproduced with care, shed light on shared experiences (Barter and Renold 2000, 312).”

“Vignettes are particularly useful when researching children and young people (Barter and Renold 2000), who may have difficulty in responding to what may be perceived as abstract questions.”

“Vignettes can be suitable to use when asking children to talk about sensitive topics (Barter & Renold, 2000; Hill, 2015).”

“The methodology provided the children with greater control over the research process (c.f. Barker and Weller, 2003; Barter and Renold, 2000; Christensen, 2004).”

“Existing research has reiterated the utility of vignette designs in addressing sensitive topics that would otherwise be limited in terms of study access (Barter & Renold, 2000).”

“Additionally, the literature demonstrates that vignettes capture meanings, beliefs, judgments, and actions that are locally positioned (Barter and Renold 2000).”

“For this study, we took this principle as a starting point, but we focused on the qualitative part as we realised that pre-structured response options would make it difficult to understand why certain variables would elicit what kind of decision-making (Barter and Renold 2000).”

“…and Wood (2006), vignettes are used in interview and focus group methods and are used to collect both qualitative (Hughes, 1998) and quantitative data (Corser & Furnell, 1992) or a combination of both, with open-ended and close-ended responses (Barter & Renold, 2000; Finch, 1987; Leighton, 2010).”

“Barter and Renold (2000) define vignettes as short scenarios intended to provide concrete examples of observations that captured the ways ‘meanings, beliefs, judgements, actions are situationally positioned’ (p. 308).”

“In contrast, qualitative studies concerning C/B from the disciplines of education and sociology prioritize the social contexts and lived experiences of CYP (e.g. Barter & Renold, 2000; Duncan, 1997; Mishna, 2004; Shute et al., 2008; Spears et al., 2009; Thornberg, 2011; Torrance, 2000).”

“Fourth, there is the concern that participants may have provided socially desirable responses (Barter & Reynold, 2000) or variance between actual and reported practice of DI (Lucas et al., 2009).”

“Unlike its historical use in social science research as a fictionalized scenario that is presented to participants to evoke a response during data collection (Barter and Renold, 2000), the vignette form was used in this case study as an interpretive framework for the qualitative narratives.”

“…theory–practice gap by giving direct access to the reasoning process of LTC staff that is not necessarily available via the interview transcripts and is inaccessible in other ways for both practical and ethical reasons (e.g., observation; Barter & Renold, 2000; Hughes & Huby, 2004; Renold, 2002).”

“The use of vignettes in the study of sensitive topics is well documented (Finch, 1987; Hughes, 1998; Barter & Renold, 2000; Hughes & Huby, 2002).”

“Studies by Barter and Renold (2010), Golding (2014) and Thomas and colleagues (1999) successfully used similar techniques with looked after children to support their participation and capture their voices.”

“Although they are commonly used in qualitative research, using vignettes or hypothetical scenarios that model sexual risky situations (Barter & Renold, 2000) can be a useful method for exploring adolescents’ perspectives on sexual risky behaviors and for identifying strategies that may be effective…”

“…out with a total of 60 young people (see Table 1), which enabled discussions about sexual activity and unwanted sexual experiences that they may or may not have directly encountered, as well as an exploration of their attitudes and meanings ascribed to these (Barter and Renold, 2000; Frith, 2000).”

“Vignettes have been found to be efficient in finding out people’s opinions about scenarios and individuals [52, 53].”

“Vignettes are found to be useful in both facilitating the discussion of abstract concepts or sensitive topics and in finding out ‘how meanings, beliefs, judgments and actions are situationally positioned’ (Barter and Renold 2000, 308).”

“According to Barter and Renold (2000), short descriptions and vignettes allow children to identify and engage with the given topic and to provide accurate opinions.”