Playing with subjectivities: i-poems, co-production and mental health literacy (MHL)

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Abstract

This paper explores researcher subjectivity by drawing on data from an 18-month co-production project. The project was conducted in a Scottish university with 9 postgraduate students co-producing and delivering a mental health literacy programme to fellow students. Data were collected regarding participant’s experiences of the project and MHL during pre- and post-co-production interviews, a focus group and field notes.

To creatively capture the students’ narratives and develop and disseminate different ways of sharing research findings, we engaged in methodological innovation combining the principles of co-production with the Listening Guide (Gilligan, 2015) to develop I-poems. I-Poems are poems typically created by the researcher depicting how a participant thinks and feels about themself and their inner and outer worlds. The researcher typically develops the I-poems by extracting all sentences referring to the self from participant’s transcripts and lists them in the order of their occurrence, with each I statement starting a new line, as in a poem. In the spirit of co-production, we asked participants to create their own I-poems to understand their sense of self and positioning on mental health.

In addition to combining methodological approaches, we wanted to play with the concept of subjectivity to examine our choices in data representation. We compare the I-poems created by us, the researchers with those created by the participants. This paper explores what happens when our participants make the choices, and how the stories we present may differ. Playfully we explore the subjectivities in the I-poems highlighting areas of convergence and divergence between the participants and us, the researchers.

Gilligan, C. (2015). The listening guide method of psychological inquiry. Qualitative Psychology, 2(1), 69–77. https://doi.org/10.1037/qup0000023
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jan 2025
Event8th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry - University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Duration: 8 Jan 202510 Jan 2025
Conference number: 8th
https://ecqi.hss.ed.ac.uk/en/

Conference

Conference8th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry
Abbreviated titleECQI 2025
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityEdinburgh
Period8/01/2510/01/25
Internet address

Keywords

  • i-poems
  • co-production
  • mental health literacy
  • subjectivity

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