Background: Storyboarding in research can be dynamic way to engage in the research process as well as a form of data collection. Storyboarding can be engaged to express a story for both participants and researchers to engage in and create an opportunity between various stakeholders (co-creators) in the research process to form a ‘shared language’ (Knowles & Cole, 2008). As a methodology, storytelling is a well-recognised qualitative research method. Storytelling in research design creates an opportunity to bring to the fore various nuances not accessible using other design methods and can assist in expanding design perspectives (Liu et al., 2012).
Objectives: Using storyboarding and storytelling, this qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) aimed to explore adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART) for young people living with perinatal infections of HIV in a deep and nuanced way.
Methods: We searched up to November 2021 and followed the Cochrane guidelines for QES. We analysed and interpreted the findings innovatively by following nine steps of synthesis by storyboarding, a technique we experimented with in this QES. These steps included the following: 1. Adopt a perspective to analyse and interpret findings; 2. Familiarisation with the included studies through diffractive reading; 3. Identify and extract codes, quotes, and material markers; 4. Create images of meaning; 5. Place and connect images of meaning onto storyboard; 6. Interpret the storylines emerging from the storyboard; 7. Revise, redefine, and redraw storyboard with new insights; 8. Storytelling, i.e., provide a narrative first-person account of the storyboard; and 9. Researchers reflexivity.
Results: We included 47 studies and identified nine storylines. We found that treatment adherence has less to do with humans’ preferences, motivations, needs, and dispositions and more to do with how bodies, viruses, things, ideas, institutions, environments, social processes, and social structures assemble. Using storyboarding, we were able to move deeper into the analysis of the integrated story of adherence to ART.
Conclusions: Future research into rethinking the linear and casual inferences that we are accustomed to in evidence-based health care is needed if we are to adopt multidisciplinary approaches to address pressing issues such as adherence to ART.