Bubble Drawing

The bubble drawing is a type of projective or enabling technique for research use. It facilitates research participants in describing their thoughts and feelings in relation to a research question of interest. Its advantage is that it is a relatively quick and easy way of accessing and understanding the more emotional considerations in educational choices. This technique can be used in any type of research including educational research. This entry further describes the technique and how it is used.

The drawing is given to research participants (respondents) as a catalyst or stimuli to further discussion. Typically in the drawing, two people are talking to each other with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths and thought bubbles emerging from their heads (minds). The research question is encapsulated in the speech bubble of one of the people (or objects) in the drawings. The speech and thought bubbles of the other person are empty, and it is the job of the research participant to complete these in answer or response to what has been asked or said in the other speech bubble.

For example, if a university or college was researching its attractiveness to students, it may present research participants with a drawing of a building to represent the institution and a drawing of a person to represent the potential student. The university might be saying something like “Why not come and study here, we have a great reputation?” The research participant would be asked to complete, by writing within the bubbles, what the other person—in this case, a potential student—was saying and thinking.

In reply, the speech bubble would tend to contain answers that reflect the rational aspects of the choice of educational establishment. These answers would be more or less the same as would be gained from a similar question in a questionnaire. However, the thought bubble typically contains the underlying and/or emotional and otherwise rarely articulated concerns of the student regarding the particular university or college. This often provides valuable and informative insights.

Just as with other projective techniques, the advantage of the bubble drawing is that it depersonalizes the answers because the research participants are told to fill in the speech and thoughts of the other person in the drawing (not to answer on their own behalf). This depersonalizes the answer and thereby removes some of the potential sensitivity of the answers that are given. This in turn enables the researchers to get a deeper understanding of the “real” concerns of the research participants. This is because the research participants unself-consciously project their own thoughts, feelings, and concerns onto the person in the drawing.

The use of a bubble drawing in research is also assumed to stimulate the nonverbal, less rational, and more emotional parts of the brain, thus facilitating answers that may otherwise be difficult to obtain because they are less consciously considered by the research participant. For example, the bubble drawing technique could be useful in researching the emotional reasons for undergraduate withdrawal (C. R. Boddy, 2010)because it may otherwise be too sensitive for failing students to openly discuss their emotions concerning loneliness, isolation, and academic bewilderment. Their answers to more rational and direct investigations may be biased by social desirability bias—the tendency to give answers that are more socially acceptable or that portray the respondent in a better light.

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