Use of Arts among Single Mothers in Taiwan: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Research Study

Use of art-painting, literary works, poetry, music and film–as expressions of life have the potential to explain the everyday world of human beings. The aim of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the lived world of 15 single mothers in Taiwan through the processes of in-depth semi-structured interviews and the use of art work. Van Manen (1997)’s analysis was used for data analysis. In addition to using interviews as the traditional method of data gathering, we also included art work as representations of participants’ lived experience of the phenomenon. The inclusion of art work provided a rich repository of information that not only complemented the interview data (by adding a different dimension to the participants’ experiences of the phenomenon of being a single mother in Taiwan), but also lent support for the use of art work in human science research.