What Are the Right Tools for Studying Arts in Health Interventions?

Miranda B Olson, Stacey Springs, Jay Baruch

The arts can touch places that are difficult to recognize and understand, capture in words, or measure by numbers-whether you're an artist, a patient, or an educator. This ineffability presents a dilemma for practitioners and researchers in arts in health when questions of legitimacy, efficacy, program implementation, and research funding are tied to outcomes-based research. Ethical tensions arise when traditional public health and clinical research methods are the wrong tools for capturing what's vital about the arts. This article argues that being a responsible arts in health researcher requires interrogating what counts as evidence, especially when the insistence on rigor risks oversimplifying and diminishing the power of the arts. It further argues for equity in arts in health research, including equity in investigative strategies that value both the arts and the research.