Photo-interviewing to explore everyday occupation: Benefits and issues

This article sheds light on the potential and the limitations of photo-interviewing for the study of human occupation and, in so doing, reflects the rapid growth in the use of participatory visual methods in a number of other disciplines. Drawing from a study that explored first person perspectives of participation in everyday occupations by people with osteoarthritis of the hand, the paper considers methodological issues related to using participatory visual methods. Participants were asked to generate photographs depicting aspects of their lived experiences, which were then used for photo-interviewing. Empirical data are presented that emphasize the productiveness of participants’ verbal interpretation of photographs. Photo-interviewing was found to engage participants in reflections on everyday life to a greater extent than conventional interviews and proved to be particularly well suited to generating knowledge of embodied everyday life experiences. Despite the fact that there were a number of methodological issues that require close consideration, when used appropriately visual research methodologies may help researchers to access rich information about everyday living that may otherwise be lost in conventional interviewing. Keywords: Osteoarthritis, Participatory visual methods, Photo-interviewing, Everyday occupations, Long-term conditions Visual research methods have been employed in a variety of fields such as anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, organizational studies, psychology, education and public health (Drew, Duncan, & Sawyer, 2010 Drew, S. E., Duncan, R. E., & Sawyer, S. M. (2010). Visual storytelling: A beneficial but challenging method for health research with young people. Qualitative Health Research, 20(12), 1677–1688. doi:10.1177/1049732310377455[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Harper, 2002 Harper, D. (2002). Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation. 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How do we “see” occupations? An examination of visual research methodologies in the study of human occupation. Journal of Occupational Science, 18(4), 292–305. doi:10.1080/14427591.2011.610776[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]; Wright-St Clair, 2012 Wright-St Clair, V. (2012). Being occupied with what matters in advanced age. Journal of Occupational Science, 19(1), 44–53. doi: 10.1080/14427591.2011.639135[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]). Visual research is a broad category comprising a variety of practices. Some approaches follow a realist tradition recognizing images as data in their own right, while others emphasize the constructedness of images and their interpretation (Warren, 2005 Warren, S. (2005). Photography and voice in critical qualitative management research. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 18(6), 861–882. doi:10.1108/09513570510627748[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Participatory visual methods, which include photo-elicitation, photovoice, informant-directed photography and participatory video (Pink, 2011 Pink, S. (2011). A multisensory approach to visual methods. In E. Margolis & L. Puwels (Eds.), The Sage handbook of visual research methods (pp. 601–615). London: Sage.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]), are a sub-category featuring research participants’ involvement. Participatory methods can be regarded as a postmodern dialogue based on the authority of the researched rather than the researcher (Warren, 2005 Warren, S. (2005). Photography and voice in critical qualitative management research. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 18(6), 861–882. doi:10.1108/09513570510627748[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). The aim of this paper is to highlight photo-interviewing as a possible visual method for occupational science research. Data from a study of participation in everyday occupations among persons with hand osteoarthritis is here used to shed light on the potential and the methodological issues involved in using photo-interviewing. The intent of the paper is to explore the usefulness of the approach to increase understanding of human occupation.