Image-Based Emplotment Questionnaire

Abstract:

This software prototype, questionnaire platform seeks to question the accepted authority of text through privileging an image-based qualitative method for collecting data. In this way, the project is more methodological through its efforts to define a systematised and repeatable process for deriving meaning than pedagogical through its use of an educational test case (which in this case were Level 4 BA (Hons) Media Production students undertaking the Digital Media Design unit). The metaphorical basis of the project draws on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (1980; 1993) - through seeking to simplify the process of describing new and unfamiliar concepts through the use of metaphors. Data derived through the use of the questionnaire is subsequently interpreted using Paul Ricœur’s theory of ‘emplotment’. In this way, the use of the questionnaire is conceptualised as part of the broader, hermeneutic process respondents undertaken in their effort to make-sense and conceptualise their evolving histories.

A demonstration questionnaire is available here: http://simonperkins.co.uk/emplotment/?idstr=4khaTGquQRl whose results are summarised here: http://simonperkins.co.uk/emplotment/?cohort=4khaTGquQRl Note that the summary is also image-based, in that the degree to which images are repeated or not signifies the frequency of answers to particular questions (for ease, graphs have also been added at the foot of the page).

http://simonperkins.co.uk/emplotment/?idstr=4khaTGquQRl

Source: Manual