Exploring Healthcare Personnel’s Exercise of Power Against Service Receivers Through Floor Plan Drawings

The prevention of excessive and unnecessary exercise of power against service receivers in institutional contexts requires research methods able to identify and analyze these multiple and often complex forms of exercise of power. This article illustrates one such method: floor plan drawings as visual methods for generating and analyzing data. Based on an ethnographic study of a Norwegian group home for people with intellectual disabilities, the article demonstrates how sketching floor plans in the field can enrich data generation with narratives of healthcare personnel’s social practices, including practices of control. By color-coding floor plan drawings, subtle and intricate forms of exercise of power, as well as material structures related to power relations, be identified. It can illustrate the extent of healthcare personnel’s exercise of power and contribute to insight into a particular vulnerable group at risk of being marginalized in research.