Piloting a Virtual Arts-Based Methodology to Explore Children’s Experiences of Chronic Pain: Methodological Insights and Lessons Learned

Abstract

In the field of childhood pain, the knowledge and expertise of children has long been overlooked. Instead, adult knowledge has been privileged over child knowledge, despite contemporary understandings that the experience of pain is subjective in nature and can only be fully appreciated by the person experiencing it – regardless of age, stage, or status. In this paper, we report on a pilot study that combined virtual semi-structured interviewing methods with arts-based research methods (drawing or painting, produced offline in the time between virtual interviews) to explore children’s experiences of chronic pain from their own perspectives . We use this study as a backdrop to make visible the ‘behind the scenes’ methodological work of arts-based research with children, paying particular attention to the ways in which our methodological approach created time and space for reflection, supported the co-production of knowledge, provided a means through which to visualize the effect of broader social influences on knowledge production, and provoked novel lines of analysis and inquiry. All these affordances call for deeply reflexive research practices. We suggest the methodological approach described in this paper can help amplify and add value to research with young children. The richness of the children’s accounts concerning chronic pain add to the body of evidence demonstrating that ‘even’ young children have knowledge, expertise, and insights that should be elicited to expand understandings of children’s pain and other similarly abstract topics, phenomenon, and lines of inquiry in health.