Exploring the Methodology of Essentialist Portraiture and Portrait Writing

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of the essentialist portrait method in terms of its implementation procedure and writing method and to compare and examine them with other qualitative research methods, thereby contributing to the study of qualitative research. To this end, we collected books, papers, lecture materials, and daily conversation materials published by Klaus Witz and analyzed them in parallel with a literature review. Klaus Witz developed the essential portrait method which has characteristics suitable for profoundly exploring the subjective experiences of research participants, such as their motivations, consciousness, and enlightenment.Researchers who perform the essentialist portrait method form a companionate relationship with research participants and collect data by conducting high-density, in-depth interviews based on the principle of sympathetic introspection advocated by Charles Cooley. At this time, the ability to use immediate follow-up questions according to the flow of important narratives of research participants is vital when conducting in-depth interviews. The researcher repeatedly listens to the audio data containing the collected in-depth interviews, finds vivid passages related to the topic, and conducts interpretive work to elaborate the meaning by creating a timeline for the main aspects.The researcher attempts to reveal the essence behind the topic by writing about the aspects that he or she sympathizes with and understands in the in-depth interview data as if drawing a portrait.In this process, the relationship of companionship, such as showing the interpretation of the in-depth interview data and the draft of the portrait writing to the research participant and receiving feedback, continues to play an important role until the end of the research. Finally, we introduce a case where the portrait method was applied, and after comparing and examining it with other qualitative research methods, we suggest a direction for follow-up research on the application of the portrait method.