Experience mapping: a promising method for enhancing resilience in children
On the basis of a drawn floor plan, experience mapping involves making the invisible visible and discussing it with parents and children. Dynamics of Youth welcomes Hungarian health psychologists and family therapists Tamás Martos and Viola Sallay from the University of Szeged, thanks to the Erasmus Staff Mobility Programme. During their visit, the two researchers will tell us all about Experience Mapping: a method that is used in both therapy and research. The method is promising and a source of inspiration for youth researchers at the UU and UMCU.
Experience mapping
Experience mapping is an important method that Martos and Sallay use in both research and family therapy. In experience mapping, the participant is asked to draw a place where they spend a lot of time, such as their house. The drawing can be supplement with details such as furniture. Based on the drawing, the researcher will ask about situations specific to the participant. What happened? How did they feel? Where were the other people in the house at the time? How did they react? How did this come across?
Building instead of drawing
The researchers proudly show off EMOTH: a package resembling a board game, with cards that can be placed together to form rooms, pieces that represent furniture and coloured pawns to represent people. It is a building kit that families can use to build the house together, instead of just drawing. Besides, there are cards with questions on the table to help get the conversation started. “Bringing out this package creates a playful and cooperative atmosphere."
Therapy and research
Sallay and Martos both work as family therapists as well as researchers. The method is helpful in both practices. “It makes the invisible visible”, says Sallay. “In therapy, the drawing is discussed in a group setting. Here, although the therapist may lead the conversation, all the family members listen along and simulate the situation on the floor plan, as it were.” Within therapy, experience mapping therefore provides a guide to help family members understand how certain events or statements affect others. In a research setting, experience mapping tends more towards an in-depth interview in which the drawn floor plan forms a guideline for the conversation.
Children
The research of the two Hungarian psychologists mainly focuses on the resilience of parents. However, this method also seems promising for children. Sallay indicates that during the family therapy sessions, children got to grips enthusiastically with the floor plans. “Children are happy when they are allowed to actively do something, such as drawing. We have a lot of drawings by children, it would be good if this could be translated into research.” Heidi Lesscher, community chair of Thriving & Healthy Youth, is enthusiastic: “It’s really a playful way of conducting research. This method allows children to reveal more than they might otherwise do on their own.” Lesscher also finds the combination of qualitative and quantitative research promising: “This doesn’t happen much in Utrecht at the moment. DoY researchers are already working on an interdisciplinary basis. Combining different methods is therefore a logical next step.”
It’s really a playful way of conducting research. This method allows children to reveal more than they might otherwise do on their own.
Future research
Experience mapping has been little used in research on children so far. However, Sallay thinks this method offers potential: “In therapy, we already notice that children do well at describing their strengths and weaknesses based on the floor plan. Future research, for example, could involve asking chronically ill children to draw a map of the hospital where they are staying. Where did you feel happy? And proud? And where were you sad? Or where did you feel scared? By conducting these interviews with some thirty or forty children, you can make connections. This allows you to identify important factors regarding the resilience and vulnerability of children.” We look back with gratitude on the visit of Sallay and Martos. Dynamics of Youth strives for (international) cooperation. We look forward to further cooperation with the University of Szeged.
Six years ago, Martos and Sallay opened the ‘relationship science research lab’. They investigate relationships that people have with each other, as well as the relationship that people have with their environment and other factors that affect mental health. One of the stepping stones of the research lab is that the method combines both quantitative and qualitative research. A great deal of research has a qualitative aspect. Sallay explains: “Whenever we conduct research with chronically ill people, we always use qualitative research. This is a method of finding and drawing attention to the needs of a vulnerable population. We want to give them a voice!”