012 min
Why researchers use collage
Picture a researcher on a hospital service team. They want to know how patients felt at each step of a long course of care, so they ask each patient how they felt when the plan was explained. The answers are short and polite. Patients say they were worried or that it was fine, and the researcher still does not know what the worry was about.
The problem is not the patients. Some feelings have no ready name, and a spoken question asks for an answer at once. On sensitive topics, saying the wrong thing aloud can also feel risky. Researchers who meet this problem often change the task. They give the person pictures and words to choose from and ask them to build an answer. That task is collage.
A researcher quoted by the research platform dscout in 2021 did this in a study of end-of-life care. Participants built a collage from magazines, words and photos to show how they felt at each step of the care journey, and then used it to explain their feelings. The researcher reported that the collages let participants say more than a conversation alone had allowed.
This way of working belongs to participatory design research. In participatory research the people being studied also make something, so the work is done with them and not only about them. The rest of this entry shows where the method comes from, how a session runs, what it has produced, and where it fails.
021 min
Where collage as a research method comes from
The word collage came into research from art. Tate traces it to a French term for pasting cut paper onto surfaces and says artists first used it as a technique in the early twentieth century. The English word keeps that meaning of gluing pieces together.
Researchers took the technique into their own work much later. In 2005 Kathleen Vaughan, a visual artist studying for a doctorate in education at York University in Toronto, wrote that she needed a research method that would bring her studio practice into her research. She wanted to give the visual and the written equal weight, and she chose collage.
Other researchers took the idea further. Paula Gerstenblatt, a social work researcher, published a method in 2013 that used collage portraits to support the analysis of a study, not only to collect data. In design, the method reached practitioners through Universal Methods of Design, a 2012 handbook by Bruce Hanington and Bella Martin that lists collage as method 14 of 100.
Because the method moved from art into social science and then into design, its names and details differ between fields. This entry follows the version designers use most: participants make the collage, then explain it.
033 min
How a collage session works
A collage session has four parts: a prompt, a supply of materials, time to make, and a conversation about the result. Suzanne Culshaw, a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire, ran the clearest published version for a doctoral study of what it means to struggle as a teacher. She interviewed 14 teachers and school leaders in England, one at a time.
Each interview began with talk about why the person had become a teacher. Then she asked about a time they knew they were struggling. When that account seemed to be finished, she suggested making a collage, and she had told them beforehand that it was not a test of artistic skill. Most people finished in about 10 to 15 minutes. Some asked whether there was a time limit.
The order matters. The collage came after the spoken account, so it gave each teacher a second way to say the same thing and a chance to say what talk had missed.
Letting people bring their own items
Culshaw supplied a box of images and objects, and teachers could add things from home. One used a body board as the base, and another wanted toothpicks and got some from the kitchen. The supply is a starting point, not a limit.
Why the pieces are placed and not glued
Each teacher also received a sheet of sugar paper. Items were placed on the paper and not stuck down. This let a teacher move pieces as their thinking changed.
Staying quiet during the making
Most teachers worked without speaking. A few chatted with Culshaw, and one chose to have music on in the background.
Noting what moves
While teachers worked, Culshaw took notes on anything she wanted to follow up and on items they moved. A piece that moves is something to ask about afterward.
Looking again with a photograph
Culshaw photographed each finished collage. In a second interview, she gave each teacher the photo to look at and talk about again. The photograph gives the participant a second chance to think about what the collage says.
Why making something helps people say more
Culshaw argues that choosing and arranging pictures is visual thinking, not thinking in sentences, and that it lets people reach words by a different route. The finished collage then gives both people something to look at and point to, so the interview can follow the participant's object and not only the researcher's questions. The collage can start a conversation, or it can carry meaning of its own.
Seeing a familiar experience again
Culshaw also names a second effect. Choosing and placing pieces is slow, and slowness makes a person stop and look. She describes the slow work as a process of making a known experience strange and then familiar again, so the maker understands it better.
Metaphors that appear while making
People often pick an image because it stands for something else, such as a closed door for a blocked decision. Culshaw notes that these picture comparisons appear during making and can show how a person understands their situation. The researcher does not decide what a piece means. The maker says it.
042 min
Collage in published studies
Three published studies show how the method adapts to different people and settings.
Culshaw's teachers worked alone in their own homes, with a box of materials on a table. Richard Gorman, Bobbie Farsides and the artist Maria Bonner, at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, worked with seven mothers of children with rare genetic conditions, and they moved the method online. Weekly sessions ran for ten weeks over video calls.
The mothers tore, cut and arranged fragments while they talked. The team reported a relaxed setting in which mothers spoke openly about everyday difficulties. They described collage as a medium open enough to approach sensitive subjects without pressure. This is the main reason researchers choose it for painful topics.
Sending materials to remote participants
A video call cannot pass around a box of supplies. Before the first session, the team sent each mother a resource pack of cutting and sticking tools, paper and a sketch pad. They also asked the mothers to collect magazines and everyday papers such as travel tickets and hospital letters, and offered a budget to buy magazines.
A study of identity
A third study used collage to learn about identity. In 2024 Ofer Dekel-Dachs and Emily Moorlock, at Sheffield Hallam University, described how they used collage elicitation interviews with second- and third-generation British South Asians. Participants made a collage and were then interviewed about it. The researchers also asked participants to help interpret the results. The researchers argued that this gave richer insight into identity, which is complex and keeps changing.
Design practice at smaller scale
Design practitioners adapt the same pattern. The dscout article advises that studies with children lean on collage, storyboards or dolls, because children find it harder than adults to explain their feelings. It also describes remote sessions in which the researcher prepares an online board of images for participants to arrange.
052 min
Running a collage session
A designer can run a version of the method in one working session. These moves follow the studies above.
Pick one experience as the prompt.
Culshaw asked for a single time when each person knew they were struggling. A narrow prompt gives a collage you can read. A broad prompt gives a collage that is hard to read.
Prepare images and words.
Magazines give variety but limit what is available, and a prepared set of printed images and words keeps the session focused. Let people add their own items.
Say it is not about art.
Culshaw told every participant this in advance. She chose collage because it frees people from drawing, so it does not depend on artistic ability.
Give time and stay quiet.
Most of Culshaw's teachers worked silently for about 10 to 15 minutes. Take notes on what they move, and speak only when they invite you.
Ask the maker to explain.
Begin with what they would like to point to first. Do not offer your own reading.
Photograph the result
before anyone clears the table, and use the photo in a follow-up.
For remote sessions, send materials in advance, as Gorman's team did, or prepare a shared board of images, as the dscout researcher does.
Planning support for strong feelings
The task can bring up painful memories. Culshaw gave each participant the contact details of a support organisation, the Education Support Partnership, at every interview. She described this as part of her duty of care to the people in her study. Decide before the first session who a participant can call afterward.
061 min
Reading a collage as data
After the session, the question is what the collage is evidence of. A common mistake is to treat it as a picture the researcher can read alone, the way one reads a painting. The method assumes the opposite. In Culshaw's study and in the studies she reviews, the participant is usually asked to explain the comparisons and symbols in their own collage, using their own meanings.
So the collage and the talk belong together. The spoken account says what the pieces mean, and the arrangement shows what the person chose to put in front of you. Researchers who also invite participants to interpret the results, as Dekel-Dachs and Moorlock do, carry this one step further: the people studied help decide what the findings are.
Gerstenblatt's collage portraits show a different use. She used collage to support a thematic analysis of how people were affected by taking part in building an art installation. In that use, collage helps the researcher organise findings, and it is a separate job from collecting a participant's own account.
072 min
Where collage falls short
Collage works only when the participant has something to build with and wants to build. Four problems limit it.
The images on offer shape the story
A maker can only use what is in the box. In Gorman's study, magazines and the mass media held few images of disabled people, and the mothers found it harder to tell certain parts of their stories. They relied on personal photographs instead. When you prepare materials, ask whether the people in your study will find themselves in them.
Some people decline
Culshaw expected that someone might refuse the task, and one person did in her pilot study. She advises that no approach suits every participant. A participant who declines should be able to answer in words, and the study should not count that as a failure.
Earlier experience of art can hurt
Culshaw also warns that earlier experience of art, or of being asked to draw, can bring up strong and sometimes negative feelings. Adults who see themselves as experts may feel exposed when asked to make something unfamiliar. Say clearly that the result will not be judged as art.
Personal photographs bring other people in
Some of Gorman's collages included family members, who had not joined the study. The researchers discussed this with the participant and confirmed that the family members agreed to their images being used. Plan for this before the session, not after it.
A collage is a partial picture
A collage shows what its maker chooses to show. It is not a full record of an experience, and a researcher who treats it as one will overstate what it proves.
081 min
Collage vs. nearby research methods
Collage is often mixed up with methods that also use pictures or ask participants to make things. The axis that separates them is who makes what, and when.
| Method | What the participant does | What collage adds |
|---|---|---|
| ResearchUser interviews | ||
| ResearchPhoto studies | ||
| ResearchCultural probes | ||
| ResearchCreative toolkits |
Collage in art is a different thing. An artist's finished collage is the final product. In research, the collage is one step, and the explanation that follows holds the finding.
?3 questions
Questions people ask
How is a research collage different from a mood board?
How many people does a collage study need?
Is a collage session a form of art therapy?
§8 sources
Sources
Culshaw, S. (2019). The unspoken power of collage? Using an innovative arts-based research method to explore the experience of struggling as a teacher. London Review of Education, 17(3), 268-283:
Gorman, R., Farsides, B., & Bonner, M. (2023). Crafting representations of rare disease: collage as qualitative inquiry. Arts & Health, 16(3), 285-302:
Vaughan, K. (2005). Pieced together: Collage as an artist's method for interdisciplinary research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 4(1):
Gerstenblatt, P. (2013). Collage portraits as a method of analysis in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 12:
Show all 8 sourcesShow fewer sources
Dekel-Dachs, O., & Moorlock, E. (2024). A guide to conducting participatory collage consumer research. In Visual Methods in Marketing and Consumer Research, Routledge, 99-118:
Hanington, B., & Martin, B. (2012). Universal Methods of Design (contents listing, Google Books):
dscout (2021). Come Together: Including Participatory Design in Your Research Process:
Tate. Collage (art term entry):
