Photovoice is one of several qualitative methods utilized in community-based participatory research, and is an excellent method to use to explore the issue of climate change in your community..

As a student researcher you use photography, and stories about the photos, to identify and represent issues of importance to you.

What topics from this course most interested you?

Utilization of photovoice in conjunction with both community knowledge and best practice evidence can lead to the development of effective and comprehensive strategies to address complex health and social issues in a way that is also meaningful for the community involved.

The Background to Photovoice

The term photovoice was originally proposed by Wang and Burris in the early 1990s, to describe the approach of blending narrative with photography to explore community issues. However, this methodology builds on a deep, historical foundation of individuals and communities blending images and words to express needs, history, culture, problems, and desires. The photovoice method includes a number of distinct steps outlining participant and policy-maker recruitment and data collection.  

According to this approach, participants share photographs in a group setting through a facilitator-guided focus group discussion about:

1) the key photographs selected by individuals in the group and,

2) how to share information with policy-makers

Photovoice has gained popularity as a qualitative research method that permits researchers from various disciplines to visualize individuals’ perceptions about their everyday realities.  Photovoice projects have been conducted with a variety of cultures and population groups to explore a range of factors relating to health and social inquiry.  

The growing use of photovoice may be attributed to the numerous benefits it can provide for all stakeholders involved in the project (i.e., participants, researchers, the broader community, and decision-makers).

For you as a student researcher, the photovoice process provides an opportunity to visually portray experiences and share personal knowledge about particular issues that may be difficult to express with words alone.  This active engagement of community members in the research process demonstrates to participants that they are valuable members of the research team, and may contribute to a sense of community ownership through participation in a project that will help draw attention to important community issues.  

For researchers, the use of photographs helps to kindle dialogue amongst participants about their perceptions of the issues under discussion; further, different ideas may be obtained than those gathered solely from interviews or focus groups. It is the combination of the narrative and visual depictions that enhances the ability of researchers to accurately capture the meaning of an issue from the participant’s point of view.  The resulting photo stories become a potentially rich platform from which researchers can offer a nuanced understanding of community issues to the scientific community – an advance that can inform appropriate intervention or action on health and social problems.