Contemplating the 3P Theory to Set Grounds for Criteria for the Understanding of Arts-based Research

Abstract

In this article, “3P” stands for possibility, plausibility, and probability, which indicate the progressive effects of prediction in research results. Advocating this 3P distinction, the author tries to showcase research as a spectrum of academic endeavor with varied objectives of prediction in research finding, on which arts-based research (ABR) bases its credibility on the possibilities it opens, apart from its aesthetic features. To open up possibilities through artistic endeavor, this author’s definition of ABR is a radical approach of diminishing knowledge processes that challenges the stereotypical norm that credible research is an accumulative and systematic knowledge-increasing process, as in the case of qualitative and quantitative research that takes plausibility or probability as its purpose. Through a critical review of the science history and by performing ABR, the author argues that ABR should be taken as a credible research method as long as it creates unprecedented possibility that is significant to human welfare and the progression of knowledge. It is also argued that, despite meeting the established criteria for credible research, a set of functional criteria for ABR as a methodology in its own right should be generated out of this awareness of 3P, in respect with the research purpose and matched methods.