“The truth must dazzle gradually”

Understanding crystallization

I invite researchers to envision research not as an art/science dichotomy but as existing along a continuum from positivism/postpositivism at one end, through social constructionism and interpretivism in the spacious middle ground, with art anchoring the other end (Ellingson, 2011a). Most researchers, even if they use multiple methods, remain consistently within one epistemological paradigm that frames their methodology, research practices, and findings (Tracy, 2013). In order to encourage boundary-spanning work along the methodological continuum, I champion a postmodern-influenced approach to triangulation I term crystallization. I build most evidently upon Richardson’s (2000) concept, yet my framework’s roots run deep within broader feminist and interpretivist methodological traditions (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Hesse-Biber, 2007), and I advocate a creative, flexible amalgam rather than a set of unique strategies.

Richardson (2000) invoked the crystal as alternative metaphor to the two-dimensional, fixed triangle as the basis for methodological rigor and validity. I further articulated crystallization into a framework:

Crystallization combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent text or series of related texts, building a rich and openly partial account of a phenomenon that problematizes its own construction, highlights researchers’ vulnerabilities and positionality, makes claims about socially constructed meanings, and reveals the indeterminacy of knowledge claims even as it makes them. (Ellingson, 2009, p. 4)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Using three genres to crystallize findings.

Genre	Exemplar
Social science research report	Individualized care refers to the technicians’ practice of accommodating patients’ physical, mental, and emotional quirks as well as individual needs and preferences. PCTs [patient care technicians] framed such adaptations to individual patients as a way of demonstrating care for patients as whole persons, rather than just bodies to be worked on. (Ellingson, 2011b, p. 6)
Poetic transcription	Yeah, you joke around with him, ‘cause I remember when he first came to this clinic he was—well to me he still is— a grumpy old man. OK, but he was worse. He had a really bad case of hemorrhoids and he couldn’t sit down long times and he would cuss you and yell at you and everybody he would treat wrong. It took me a week or so until I figured him out. Give him a bad time, argue with him and it makes him happy. That’s him. I hate to say it. You got to be, kind of like, disrespectful towards him and speak to him in his own language in order for him to be happy. And he has to complain to be happy ha ha. Oh I love that old man. He’s one of those patients that when it’s time for him to go—it’s gonna hurt. (Ellingson, 2011b, p. 7)
Practitioner newsletter	When I first began conducting … [research] at an outpatient dialysis unit, I was intrigued by the near-constant barrage of “Thanks!” that echoed throughout. Faster than I could track it, dialysis technicians and nurses … moved through the space coordinating and assisting each other in small but significant ways, such as resetting a machine’s warning light or repositioning a patient’s chair. These expressions of mutual appreciation among staff were my first entry point into understanding how dialysis care providers collaborate … to provide high quality care for patients. (Ellingson, 2011c, p. 4)

First, crystallization produces knowledge about a particular phenomenon through generating a deepened, complex interpretation. All research should provide in-depth understanding of topics. Crystallization provides yet another way of achieving depth through compilation of many details, enhancing “thick description” of findings (Geertz, 1973). Detailed, nuanced portrayals of relationships provide vital insight into mundane experiences of everyday life within a web of relationships. Relational moments need to be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted, as well as analyzed and categorized. In much the same way that faculty use video clips to illustrate concepts in our interpersonal communication and relationship courses, we can incorporate rich, holistic illustrations of relating as complements to our systematic analyses. In Table 1, the three genres collectively offer rich details about daily communication among dialysis technicians and patients, in particular the adaptation of communication style according to patients’ needs and preferences. Further, Miller-Day’s (2008) study of low-wage working mothers and the personal and family challenges facing households living in poverty forms a compelling exemplar. Together with research participants and social service providers, Miller-Day fashioned an engaging community performance from interview transcripts, field notes, photography, and film that articulated four action steps as an impetus for community dialogue and advocacy; these steps also were detailed in a service agency report and a journal article and made available on a website, forming a crystallized account with tremendous details set within social context.

Second, crystallization utilizes forms of analysis or ways of producing knowledge across multiple points of the qualitative continuum, generally including at least one middle-ground (constructivist) or middle-to-right (postpositivist) analytic method and one narrative, visual, performative, or other creative approach. In this way, crystallization challenges the widely accepted belief that researchers must forsake the rigor of social science for the holism of narrative or vice versa. In Table 1, the forms of analysis include grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), which yielded the inductively derived typology from which the representative theme was drawn, and poetic transcription of an interview transcript. These two analyses involve vastly different techniques for manipulating data. In the former, I constructed patterns across data from multiple participants; in the latter, I selected excerpts from participant interviews and then carefully crafted them, much like a sculptor chipping away at a marble block to create a statue (Faulkner, 2010). More commonly, relational research utilizes mixed methods that reflect a single paradigm (e.g., Fletcher, Blair, Troutman, & Madison, 2013), although some deliberately reach across paradigms (e.g., Lieblich, 2006).

Third, crystallized texts include more than one genre of writing or representation. Crystallization depends upon segmenting, weaving, blending, or otherwise drawing upon two or more genres or ways of expressing findings. The slipperiness of generic categories notwithstanding, crystallized texts draw much of their strength from willful crossing of epistemological boundaries; the contrast between underlying assumptions draws attention to the strengths and limitations of genres. For example, in “Sample,” Rawlins (2013) performs a song he composed based upon both a participant interview and a gerontology journal abstract. The juxtaposition of genres is dramatic, as the audience hears an older man’s story flowing in the song’s rhythm and the scientific language that fits uneasily within the melody. Likewise, in the Table 1 exemplar, the three genres differ—the poetic contrasts with the analytical language of the other two forms and the informality of the newsletter excerpt and the poem contrasts with the more formal prose of the research report.

A fourth principle is that crystallized texts feature a significant degree of reflexive consideration of the researcher’s self in the process of research design, data collection, and representation. Depending upon researchers’ goals, explicit evidence of authorial reflexivity may be subtle, explicit (e.g., an endnote or brief mention in a methods section), or creatively manifested. Autoethnographic work often reveals tremendous insight into the author/researcher’s reflexivity, such as the co-constructed tale of love and loss in Vande Berg and Trujillo’s (2008) story of their relationship before, during, and after Vande Berg’s diagnosis and eventual death from ovarian cancer. The authors reveal their swirling depths of emotions and how they make sense of each other during the cancer journey. In the Table 1 exemplar, my reflexivity is most evident in the newsletter excerpt where I share how I came to understand the complexity of communication within dialysis.

Fifth, crystallization eschews positivist claims to objectivity and a singular, discoverable truth and embraces, reveals, and even celebrates knowledge as inevitably situated, partial, constructed, multiple, and embodied. In this way, crystallization goes beyond the laudatory goals of interpretivist and postpositivist social science that acknowledge the situated and partial nature of all findings. Crystallization brings together multiple methods and multiple genres to enrich findings and to highlight the inherent limitations of all knowledge. That is, each account provides pieces of a meaning puzzle but never completes it, rendering the impossibility of total understanding more apparent. Thus, crystallization does not merely acknowledge but celebrates the partiality of truths generated in research. Crystallization’s postmodern validity complements postpositivist validity with an awareness of ways in which genres shape our understandings of relationships. Putting social science into conversation with art and with material intended for public audiences demonstrates the relevance and efficacy—and hence validity—of research. Indeed, the podcasts of interviews with Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (JSPR) authors discussing their research (available on JSPR’s website) are excellent examples of how explaining research in a different format—spoken speech, lay terminology—enhances their validity. Another example is Lindemann’s (2010) examination of masculinity, father–son relationships, and disability. In his “layered account” (Ronai, 1995), Lindemann skillfully moves back and forth between a qualitative study of a quadriplegic rugby team, contextualized within research and theorizing on gender and disability, and a series of narratives about himself and his father who was a wheelchair athlete. Lindemann’s (artistic) personal narratives reflected and challenged his (social scientific) explanations of the disabled athletes, highlighting important insights about hegemonic masculinity, sport, and disability, while pointing to the impossibility of fully capturing Lindemann’s relationship with his father or fully grasping cultural discourses of masculinity and sport.

Crystallization features two primary types: integrated and dendritic. Integrated crystallization refers to multigenre texts that reflect the above principles in a single, coherent representation (e.g., book) and take one of two forms: Woven, in which small pieces of two or more genres are layered together in a complex blend, or patched, in which larger pieces of two or more genres are juxtaposed in a clearly demarcated sequence. Dendritic crystallization refers to the ongoing and dispersed process of making meaning through multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation in a series of disparate texts. The Table 1 exemplar reflects both types. The grounded theory analysis description of the theme and the poetic transcription were included in a journal article, embodying integrated, woven crystallization. At the same time, the newsletter article—available on the Internet—coexists with the journal article in a dendritic form of crystallization, wherein separate representations hold a generative tension with one another.

Enhancing research through crystallization: Pragmatic possibilities

One way crystallization could further enhance the value of relationship research is by assisting researchers in acting as public intellectuals. Communicating effectively with multiple audiences is facilitated by constructing nonacademic accounts to reach practitioners, community members, research participants, and other stakeholders (Papa & Singhal, 2007). Using the dendritic (dispersed) form of crystallization, researchers can transform findings for industry newsletters, website content, blogs, editorials, professional workshops, and community performances, thereby helping to promote social change. For example, I translated my research on communication in dialysis care for a national newsletter for dialysis nurses and technicians (Ellingson, 2011c).

A second pragmatic benefit is crystallization’s facilitation of participatory methods by providing means to balance the sensemaking processes and voices of researchers with those of participants, who often are members of underserved communities. Participatory methods are those that embrace social justice principles and share power with participants by having them produce data through photography and other arts, design community projects, and collaborate on exhibits, performances, or websites (Lykes & Coquillon, 2007). Crystallized representations of participatory research highlight participants’ voices and reveal institutionalized injustices. As part of a larger study of compassionate care for adolescent cancer patients, Harter and her colleagues gave video cameras to five families and produced a documentary that incorporates participants’ film footage (Harter, 2013; Harter & Hayward, 2010; Harter, Patterson, & Gerbensky-Kerber, 2010). The film, book, and article form facets of a crystal through which the horrors, joys, and mundanities faced by these vulnerable families are portrayed with compassion, and insights are shared about making health care delivery more humane.

Third, crystallization enhances researchers’ productivity by enabling them to efficiently meet federal and state granting agencies’ requirements for community information dissemination and translational research. Researchers can transform these procedural requirements from obligations and afterthoughts into integral aspects of the crystallization process. For instance, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control fund grants that require specific efforts to translate research findings to ensure that practitioners in health care and public health are utilizing up-to-date research findings (Kreps, 2011).

Finally, crystallizing research is also politically expedient. Faculty face ever-growing pressure to increase productivity in research, teaching, and service, all while appearing authoritative and relevant (but never smug) to the public. Embracing crystallization enables academics to move beyond the research/service dichotomy—in which peer-reviewed manuscripts matter in performance reviews to the exclusion of all else—and take scholarly credit for all products of research (Ellingson & Quinlan, 2012). This is not to say that all representations are equivalent; rather, each offers unique value and is integral to the process of conducting and disseminating research. Politics always have and will be part of academia. Effectively managing politics and perceptions of research often makes a crucial difference in researchers’ careers, and crystallization provides some useful tools to this end.

Conclusion

Readers likely noticed that one or more practices mentioned herein—for example, writing a presentation for a community group—are already part of their research processes. The strength of crystallization is the flexibility in its utilization, from adoption of crystallization as an overarching framework to incorporation of just one or a few of its tenants to augment a more traditional research design. Crystallization promotes the best of multiple worlds by refusing the “either/or” choice between social scientific rigor and aesthetic portrayal and choosing “both/and.” The benefits of crystallization described herein will manifest variably, depending on researchers’ choices. I would be remiss if I did not add a note of caution. While increasing productivity, crystallization also tends to increase burdens on researchers that come with sustained commitments to participants in the form of time, energy, and emotional labor. Additionally, not all researchers develop sufficient skill to produce high-quality products in all genres that they engage, as individuals’ talents, interests, and research experiences vary. In closing, I suggest that crystallization embodies significant utility, flexibility, and promise for researchers who endeavor to dazzle multiple audiences gradually and to effect positive change through the study of relationships.