Journal study
What
In a journal study, participants are asked to keep a journal for a certain period, completing daily assignments, questions for reflection and fill-in-the-blanks exercises on a particular topic. You then reflect on the journal together with the participants.
Why
A journal study obliges participants to reflect on a topic for a longer period. By having a discussion about it afterwards, answers will come up that are the first thing to occur to participants, leading to profound insights.
How
- Define a topic, or a few topics, for the journal study.
- Decide for how many days you want the participants to reflect. This is often a week, but it may be shorter or longer depending on the topic or issue.
- Think of one or a few assignments or questions for each day to help the participants reflect on the defined topics. Make optimum use of the medium: in a journal one can draw, fill in a timeline, paste illustrations or photos, write a letter, draw a comic strip, and so forth.
- Give the journal shape. Make a cover and an instruction page, and decide what the pages for the different days will look like. Which instructions will you give along with the assignments and questions? And what method of filling in the information works best?
- Print a journal for each participant.
- Instruct the participants and hand them the journals. Give them enough time to fill in the journal.
- Send the participants the occasional reminder to write in their journal – they often forget to do so.
- Collect the journals as soon as they have been filled in.
- Prepare the reflection carefully: go through the journals and formulate some questions to ask when reflecting. What draws your attention in the journals? What would you like have explained further?
- Reflect on the journals together with the participants. Bring the journals along for this and go over each day with them.