Found Poems, Member Checking and Crises of Representation

In order to establish veracity, qualitative researchers frequently rely on member checks to insure credibility by giving participants opportunities to correct errors, challenge interpretations and assess results; however, member checks are not without drawbacks. This paper describes an innovative approach to conducting member checks. Six members of a learning organization participated in two group interviews to examine the use of poetry as a method to promote individual and organizational learning. Several weeks later, participants received a copy of their transcripts and were asked to create a "found poem" to reflect their thoughts and feelings about using poetry as a learning tool. There was resonance between the interview themes produced by traditional open coding methods and those using participant-created found poems. However, the found poems added an emotional depth and connection that was missing from the traditional approach of coding qualitative data. This suggests that participant-created found poems can provide an agentic alternative to the usual method of member checking and also expand the notions of aesthetic approaches within qualitative research. Adapted from the source document.