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Visual research is a qualitative research methodology that relies on artistic mediums to produce and represent knowledge. These artistic mediums include film, photography, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. The artistic mediums provide a rich source of information that has the ability to capture reality. They also reveal information about what the medium captures, but the artist or the creator behind the medium. Using photography as an example, the photographs taken illustrate reality and give information about the photographer through the angle, the focus of the image, and the moment in which the picture was taken. Nevertheless, some argue that visual research is not comparable to traditional methodology.
Images are an essential component for different sorts of inquiries on a wide range of topics and research questions may call for a visual component in a variety of ways. One way could be to the research questions or the phenomena being examined, or the researcher could be the one making new images. After the visual material is created the resulting collection may be the base of further discussion, interviews, and or analysis, although the process of creating images is often a large part of the research process itself.
This method of data collection is often used to elicit data or opinion, here the participant is the one who would be generating the visual data. If it is a photograph she or he has taken it, or for a video, she or he has shot the visual data that will be further analysed. This allows the researcher to understand participants' views and perceptions.
Caroline C. Wang and Mary Anne Burris conceptualized the visual methodology called photovoice. Participants are provided with a camera and asked to produce an image-based account of their experiences and/or those things that are important to them in a particular context. These projects share the assumption that increased participant control of data generation through production of visual images will help to highlight important aspects of lived experience that might otherwise have been overlooked or ignored by researchers. This method is often used in social science and health research.
Ricardo Gomez and Sara Vannini ( [1] ) introduced a variation of photovoice called Fotohistorias, that combines participant-generated photos and semistructured interviews to elicit lived experiences of immigrants and other marginalized communities. Fotohistorias combines the power of images and the richness of stories. Together, they yield more depth and sensitivity than either photos or interviews alone. Fotohistorias helps to quickly get to deep conversation about profound and meaningful topics, by focusing on the photos as a pretext for conversation. Fotohistorias helps elicit multiple perspectives and symbols from the same image or place, emphasizing how people's perceptions and feelings shape meaning and experience. Fotohistorias participants frequently feel empowered, heard and valued, and gain a new perspective and agency over their current situation and context. [2]
The photo-elicitation approach can include researcher or participant generated photographs. Photographs are introduced to the context of research interview based on the "assumption about the role and utility of photographs in promoting reflections that words alone cannot." Participant generated photo elicitation puts significance to the participants role in shaping the creation of visual images. It is important to note the value of the technique for "bridging culturally distinct worlds of the researcher and the researched." The term photo-elicitation originated from a paper published by Collier (1957), when it was initiated as a solution to the practical difficulties that research teams were having in relation to agreeing on categories for quality housing. Collier extended the method to examine how families adapted to residence among ethnically different people, and to new forms of work in urban factories, interviewing families and communities with photographs created by researchers. Reflecting on the use of photo-elicitation, Collier (1957, p. 858), argued that ‘pictures elicited longer and more comprehensive interviews but at the same time helped subjects overcome the fatigue and repetition of conventional interviews’ and noted the technique's ‘compelling effect upon the informant, its ability to prod latent memory, to stimulate and release emotional statements about the informant’s life’. Photo-elicitation with researcher-initiated productions has been taken up by a range of researchers across the social sciences and related disciplines (Mannay 2016) [3]
This technique of data collection is mostly used by researchers who believe in Positivist or realist view of the world. Making a film as opposed to simply shooting footages, involves editing and other post production tasks, such as adding subtitles, but it also rests upon a series of ideas concerning the place of visual representation within social science itself. This technique of data collection or data analysis is not widely used because of its multiple requirements. Making films – to elicit data or opinion, can be of 3 basic types: 1.Documenting or filming the subjects 2.Showing a film to the subjects and asking about their opinion 3.Asking the subjects to make a film
There are 3 basic concerns when it comes to analysis of a film or a video: 1. the analytical approach taken towards film or video. 2. method employed to derive data. 3. the kind of issue being analysed.
This methodology is beneficial in its applicability to participants who may be illiterate or have difficulty communicating because of language barriers, lack of education, or a disability. This characteristic of Photovoice allows researchers who choose to use this methodology to choose participants from a large sample pool because there are no language or literacy requirements. Photovoice may be a powerful research tool because it allows the researcher to see the topic being studied from the participant's perspective. It also encourages the participants and the researcher to reflect on the images and meaning behind them as they highlight an aspect or perspective of the research topic perhaps not previously considered. In this way visual methods of data production can act as tools of defamiliarisation, fighting familiarity for both researchers and participants and allowing space for a more nuanced understanding of the topics studies (Mannay 2010). [4]
The use of Photovoice also has its limits. It requires the researcher to budget for the equipment used to carry it out, such as cameras, ink and printing costs. This may be problematic for the researcher if the research has been given limited or insufficient funds.
Another problem that may arise in the use of Photovoice is the question of photograph ownership. The researcher may be providing the equipment, but it is the participants who are taking the pictures. To avoid any potential issues regarding photograph ownership, it is advised that researchers obtain from their participants permission to use the photographs they take. It is particularly important to think carefully about informed consent in an era of digital dissemination and open access publication where images can be reworked, redistributed and recirculated in the digital economy, in ways that may not have been envisaged at the time of the research study (Mannay, 2014). [5]
These are activities where the experimenters are either not disclosing their real identity, or their true purpose for the activity. This includes assuming a false identity such as creating an avatar in an online game, or pretending to be a tourist while looking at statutes. This could also includes manipulating settings in order to observe reactions.
These activities concern individuals who feel that a particular population is being treated in a dispassionate manner or similar to scientists observing natural phenomena in a clinical way. Examples of this would be the exercises which you ask to observe the waiting behaviors of people in public places (either in person from a distance or via webcam).
This category refers to a in-depth analysis of intimate, meaningful or personal places activities or spaces, and may include making judgments which could sadden or offend people. An example of this could be coding or commenting on gravestone trends or personal graffiti.
This is a category, in which the exercise or project may upset some people, or create anxiety or fear (including and potentially, in the researcher). This may happen due to situations which could include wasting people's time or not conforming to societal norms, such as in 'breaching' experiments. The visual offers a range of exciting possibilities for social research but it also brings an array of challenges and ethical difficulties. Visual Ethics can now be regarded as a specialist area within visual methodologies. Much mainstream engagement with the ethics of visual ethnography focuses on issues of anonymity of place and participants so that the focus is on who is taking the picture, who is in the picture; and what else can be known from the geography or materiality of the image. Thus, the moral maze of image ethics has been centrally concerned with the creator of images in relation to informed consent and the tension between revealing and concealing the contents of visual images; and who has ‘the right’ to claim ownership of images to in turn edit their content and show them to others (Mannay 2016).Once a visual image is created it becomes very difficult to control its use or remove it from the public arena if participants decide that they no longer want to be represented in a fixed visual trope for time immemorial. Even if images are successfully anodised, acts to disguise images can be seen as tantamount to silencing the voice of research participants. This is particularly problematic where researchers invest in the epistemological aims of participatory approaches predicated on giving ‘voice’.
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are used in market research to understand better people's reactions to products or services or participants' perceptions of shared experiences. The discussions can be guided or open. In market research, focus groups can explore a group's response to a new product or service. As a program evaluation tool, they can elicit lessons learned and recommendations for performance improvement. The idea is for the researcher to understand participants' reactions. If group members are representative of a larger population, those reactions may be expected to reflect the views of that larger population. Thus, focus groups constitute a research or evaluation method that researchers organize to collect qualitative data through interactive and directed discussions.
Qualitative psychological research is psychological research that employs qualitative methods.
Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology, sociology, communication studies, human geography, and social psychology. Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time.
Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include ethnography, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, social work, folklore, educational research and software engineering research.
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bringing about a certain goal. In the context of research, this goal is usually to discover new knowledge or to verify pre-existing knowledge claims. This normally involves various steps, like choosing a sample, collecting data from this sample, and interpreting this data. The study of methods involves a detailed description and analysis of these processes. It includes evaluative aspects by comparing different methods to assess their advantages and disadvantages relative to different research goals and situations. This way, a methodology can help make the research process efficient and reliable by guiding researchers on which method to employ at each step. These descriptions and evaluations of methods often depend on philosophical background assumptions. The assumptions are about issues like how the studied phenomena are to be conceptualized, what constitutes evidence for or against them, and what the general goal of research is. When understood in the widest sense, methodology also includes the discussion of these more abstract issues.
Grounded theory is a systematic methodology that has been largely applied to qualitative research conducted by social scientists. The methodology involves the construction of hypotheses and theories through the collecting and analysis of data. Grounded theory involves the application of inductive reasoning. The methodology contrasts with the hypothetico-deductive model used in traditional scientific research.
Narrative inquiry or narrative analysis emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research in the early 20th century, as evidence exists that this method was used in psychology and sociology. Narrative inquiry uses field texts, such as stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos, and life experience, as the units of analysis to research and understand the way people create meaning in their lives as narratives.
Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life.
Photovoice is a qualitative research method used in community-based participatory research to gather information. Photovoice uses participant photography to guide interviews, and is commonly used in the fields of community development, international development, public health, and education. According to the creators of the process, a photovoice project should aim to: (1) empower individuals to document and reflect on community assets and concerns, (2) invite critical dialogue and create knowledge about important community issues while using photographs as a medium for group discussion, (3) reach policymakers and stakeholders. Generally, photovoice participants attend basic photography training and then take photographs to respond to a prompt. Photos taken by participants are then used as reference material to guide a formal interview. One advantage of photovoice is that, unlike traditional interviews, it does not rely on verbal communication alone. Since photovoice enables participants to respond to an interview question non-verbally, with photographs, it can be used to overcome social, cultural and linguistic barriers to verbal communication. As a result, photovoice can be implemented with participants regardless of age, education level, language, gender, race, class, disability, etc. Photovoice can be used to gather new insights and perspectives that can raise awareness of hidden or overlooked issues and aspects of a given community.
An unstructured interview or non-directive interview is an interview in which questions are not prearranged. These non-directive interviews are considered to be the opposite of a structured interview which offers a set amount of standardized questions. The form of the unstructured interview varies widely, with some questions being prepared in advance in relation to a topic that the researcher or interviewer wishes to cover. They tend to be more informal and free flowing than a structured interview, much like an everyday conversation. Probing is seen to be the part of the research process that differentiates the in-depth, unstructured interview from an everyday conversation. This nature of conversation allows for spontaneity and for questions to develop during the course of the interview, which are based on the interviewees' responses. The chief feature of the unstructured interview is the idea of probe questions that are designed to be as open as possible. It is a qualitative research method and accordingly prioritizes validity and the depth of the interviewees' answers. One of the potential drawbacks is the loss of reliability, thereby making it more difficult to draw patterns among interviewees' responses in comparison to structured interviews. Unstructured interviews are used in a variety of fields and circumstances, ranging from research in social sciences, such as sociology, to college and job interviews. Fontana and Frey have identified three types of in depth, ethnographic, unstructured interviews - oral history, creative interviews, and post-modern interviews.
John Collier Jr. was an American anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology. His emphasis on analysis and use of still photographs in ethnography led him to significant contributions in other subfields of anthropology, especially the applied anthropology of education. His book, Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method (1967) is one of the earliest textbooks in the field and is still in use today. He is also notable as someone who overcame significant learning and hearing impairments to succeed on a larger stage.
Netnography, is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It adapts the methods of ethnography, is understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts. You can think of netnography as a particular set of actions for doing research within and about social media. Netnography is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in participant observation. In netnography, a significant amount of the data originates in and manifests through the digital traces of naturally occurring public conversations recorded by contemporary communications networks. Netnography uses these conversations as data. It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-person participant observation techniques of anthropology to the study of interactions and experiences manifesting through digital communications.
An online interview is an online research method conducted using computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as instant messaging, email, or video. Online interviews require different ethical considerations, sampling and rapport than practices found in traditional face-to-face (F2F) interviews. Online interviews are separated into synchronous online interviews, for example via online chat which happen in 'real time' online and asynchronous online interviews, for example via email conducted in non-real time. Some authors discuss online interviews in relation to online focus groups whereas others look at online interviews as separate research methods. This article will only discuss online interviews.
Diary studies is a research method that collects qualitative information by having participants record entries about their everyday lives in a log, diary or journal about the activity or experience being studied. This collection of data uses a longitudinal technique, meaning participants are studied over a period of time. This research tool, although not being able to provide results as detailed as a true field study, can still offer a vast amount of contextual information without the costs of a true field study. Diary studies are also known as experience sampling or ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology.
Thematic analysis is one of the most common forms of analysis within qualitative research. It emphasizes identifying, analysing and interpreting patterns of meaning within qualitative data. Thematic analysis is often understood as a method or technique in contrast to most other qualitative analytic approaches - such as grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis - which can be described as methodologies or theoretically informed frameworks for research. Thematic analysis is best thought of as an umbrella term for a variety of different approaches, rather than a singular method. Different versions of thematic analysis are underpinned by different philosophical and conceptual assumptions and are divergent in terms of procedure. Leading thematic analysis proponents, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke distinguish between three main types of thematic analysis: coding reliability approaches, code book approaches and reflexive approaches. They describe their own widely used approach first outlined in 2006 in the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology as reflexive thematic analysis. Their 2006 paper has over 120,000 Google Scholar citations and according to Google Scholar is the most cited academic paper published in 2006. The popularity of this paper exemplifies the growing interest in thematic analysis as a distinct method.
Photo-elicitation is a method of interview in visual sociology and marketing research that uses visual images to elicit comments. The types of images used include photographs, video, paintings, cartoons, graffiti, and advertising, among others. Either the interviewer or the subject may provide the images.
An interview in qualitative research is a conversation where questions are asked to elicit information. The interviewer is usually a professional or paid researcher, sometimes trained, who poses questions to the interviewee, in an alternating series of usually brief questions and answers. They can be contrasted with focus groups in which an interviewer questions a group of people and observes the resulting conversation between interviewees, or surveys which are more anonymous and limit respondents to a range of predetermined answer choices. In addition, there are special considerations when interviewing children. In phenomenological or ethnographic research, interviews are used to uncover the meanings of central themes in the life world of the subjects from their own point of view.
Visual ethnography is an approach to ethnography that uses visual methods such as photography, film and video. There are many methods available to conduct visual ethnography. According to Sarah Pink, visual ethnography is a research methodology that brings “theory and practice of visual approaches to learning and knowing about the world and communicating these to others”. As a methodology, visual ethnography can guide the design of research as well as the methods to choose for data collection. Visual ethnography suggests a negotiation of the participants’ view of reality and a constant questioning on the part of the researcher.
Visual autoethnography is an autoethnographic qualitative research method in which an author uses self-reflection and visuals, including photography, painting, drawing, video extracts, film, and/or other forms of visual expression to engage with personal experiences and connect them to wider cultural, political, and social phenomena. Visual autoethnography has been cited as useful to convey feeling or affect to the viewer while challenging conventional research methods. Visual autoethnographers use visuals to represent and reflect on potential shared experience with viewers, "facilitating commonality while simultaneously providing individual moments of subjective reflection." The use of imagery varies in visual autoethnographic examples. Related approaches include musical autoethnography.