Political Science Research Methods – Whitworth University
Refugee Drawings Coding and Analysis of Sri Lankan Refugees Faculty Advisor: Patrick Van Inwegen Authors: Candace Pontoni, Eric Fullerton, Gillian Goodrich, Jesse Javana, Shane Fouts, and Stephen Eyman
World Concern
Coding and Analysis of Refugee Drawings in Sri Lanka Students from Whitworth University’s Political Science Research Methods class worked with World Concern to analyze the content of images produced by children at a refugee camp in Sri Lanka. We received images from World Concern that they had collected from children in refugee camps in Sri Lanka. World Concern scanned the images and then supplied us with a CD containing the scanned images. The task that we set about was to look for trends in the drawings that might help World Concern prepare a project about the lives of those that they worked with in the refugee camps. We intentionally did not do research on the situation in Sri Lanka to avoid reading into the drawings too much and over-interpreting them. We also knew nothing about the age of the children or the context of the drawing activities and none of us could read any of the writing on several of the images. That said, the analysis and interpretation of any image is necessarily subjective. This summary discusses the coding process and summarizes the trends we focused on. A separate Excel spreadsheet includes the coding for each of the 197 images. After receiving the images from World Concern, each member of the group independently looked at and coded each drawing. We took special note of items and colors that appeared to be repeated in many different drawings. There was a notable presence of drawings with flowers, trees, houses, and designs, and also a number of drawings that appeared to depict house fires, explosions, planes dropping bombs, bullets, dismembered or dead people, blood, and refugee camps. From these individual observations, we came to a consensus on how similarities should be coded. We found it particularly significant that many drawings contained seemingly violent images, and we created a list of indicators of the presence of violence in the drawings. Each image was checked for guns, planes, blood, explosions, and fire. We classified each image that contained one or more of these indicators as violent. In addition to checking each image for indicators of violence, we also took note of the colors used in each image, the presence of refugee camps, and the number of human figures. Given the likely use of this material to talk about the experiences that lead to coming to the refugee camp, we opted to not code aspects of nonviolence like flowers, animals, or designs. Within the images categorized as violent, we sought further detail as we noted the presence of planes, general artillery (hand guns, guns in planes or boats, planes dropping bombs), “red� (blood, explosion, fire), and structural fire. Figure 1 is a summary of the total data collected, sorted into three main categories: Images with Violence, Images of a Refugee Camp, and Images with Human Figures. With 31% of the images including people, this was the most common element in all the images (this was in part because of difficulty in classifying some images as flowers, designs or something else). The next most common element was violence, with 28% of the images containing a violent element. Also included here are the 7% of drawings that depict a refugee camp. While there are a lot of violent images and images with the presence of human figures, there are only twenty-four images that have both violence and humans present.
Percentage of Images in Which Trend Occurs
Figure 1 Image Totals 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% Violent Images
20.00% 15.00%
Camp
10.00% 5.00%
Presence of Human Figures
0.00% 1 Trends
To the left is an example of an image that depicted violence. It was coded as having an airplane, artillery, and fire. In this context, all of these suggested that this was depicting violence. There was group consensus that the gray object at top was an airplane and that it was dropping bombs and that the bombs were exploding, causing the red clouds at bottom. Thus, this image would have been included in each of the categories related to violence – planes, explosions, structural fires, and artillery. There were 23 violent images that included airplanes, 48 violent images that included explosions, 46 that included structural fires, and 29 that included artillery. To the right is an example of a drawing classified as a camp drawing. These typically include rows of structures that have lines coming out from them (either triangles or rounded), which we interpreted as tents or similar structures. Other aspects of camp life inferred from this picture included getting water or food in buckets and some group structures set up for instruction or meetings (at the top). The image included individuals, both at the bottom and top within the structures. This picture also is a good example of the presence of writing that we did not understand or interpret.
Figure 2 summarizes the violent images, sorted into four main categories: Images with Planes, Images with Presence of Violent Red (fire, explosions, blood, etc.), Images with the Presence of Structural Fire, and Images with the Presence of General Artillery. The categories are not exclusive, so an image could contain all four of these elements. Over 80% of the images coded as violent included the presence of fire, half included some sort of artillery, and about 40% of the violent images involved an airplane. This can give us some insight into the types of violence that the children were exposed to and are expressing in their drawings.
Percentage of Occurence in 56 Violnent Images
Figure 2 Violent Pictures in Sri Lankan Images 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 Planes
0.4
Red (Blood, Explosion, Fire) Structural Fire
0.3
General Artillery
0.2 0.1 0 1 Trends of Violence
Finally, the group compared the categories with each other. Each of these comparisons is contained in the Excel file under the cross-tab tabs. These comparisons largely confirm the general trends discussed above. Of the images with airplanes, all of them were coded as violent – that is, there were no non-violent portrayals of airplanes in the children’s drawings. Of the images that portrayed violence, 82% included a structural fire. Again, it is clear from the children’s drawings that there were consistent themes of aerial bombing that destroyed homes. This was the type of violence that was most commonly expressed in the violence portrayed in over a quarter of these drawings.