Introduction

Abstract

This introduction prefaces the papers that comprise this special issue entitled 'Using Video in Social Science and Health Research' (ISBN 978-1-921348-24-2). This issue contributes to a recent burgeoning of interest in, and use of, video based methodologies in the health and social sciences. This collection of papers, received from Austria, Australia and the United Kingdom, shows video-recording to be a truly multidisciplinary resource that is adopted to assist research into diverse contexts and topics, involving collaborative engagements with research participants from all walks of life. Video methodologies are clearly creative, evolving, challenging and rewarding.With many people using video cameras to record important life events, lay access to video recording equipment is common. In turn, popular video recordings are frequently shared on websites where they are accessed not only by people known to the participants or recorder, but by unknown individuals in a myriad of geographic locations. People are increasingly accustomed to having their everyday lives recorded, often with the understanding that the footage may be viewed by numerous other people. To use video recordings in research is to harness this wider cultural aspect which in turn can reveal the complexities of everyday experiences and realities.INTRODUCING THE PAPERS OF THE SPECIAL ISSUEThe majority of papers in this special issue adopt a participatory approach to investigating the daily experiences of participants. For example, Foster's project saw her become a fellow member with her participants in the production of video accounts about parenting in circumstances of economic disadvantage (2009). A participatory approach also features in the applications of video research in this issue that are informed by ethnography. For instance, three papers contribute to the development of two specific methodologies: 'video ethnography' and 'videoreflexivity' in Australian tertiary hospital settings. Carroll (2009) uses a feminist theoretical framework to unpack aspects of power embedded in the relationship between the researcher, participants and the video camera in video ethnography and video-reflexivity. Forsyth's paper identifies the way that differing modalities of engagement with the video camera during video ethnography led to two participant groups performing, accounting for and redesigning their work in contrasting ways. Iedema and colleagues' research (2009) engaged clinicians in reflexive viewing of their work, which led clinicians to creatively redesign problematic aspects of their handover practices. In a similar vein, Grant and Luxford (2009) video child and family health nurses interacting with migrant mothers and ask the nurses to watch the footage to assist in their reflection on intercultural communication practices. Each of these papers emphasise the value of clinician-led learning and practice change that result from the research adopting these methods.Also using video with clinicians, Leap and colleagues' paper (2009) incorporated video recordings of consultations and discussions with women, carers and health professionals as one component of an instrumental tool for training midwives and other health care professionals. The study showed that incorporating video methods with text based resources facilitated interactive inter-professional learning to a greater extent than would have been possible with a solely textbased tool. This highlights a broader trend empiricised by this special issue: a shift in qualitative social science research from a reliance on text-based data collection, analysis, and dissemination to more dialogic, evolving methodologies.Lammer's research (2009) also utilised video recordings of patients and clinicians. Her paper in this issue shows how the combination of video, visual art, interviews and ethnography richly conveyed the experiences of women undergoing surgical treatment for breast cancer. By presenting these accounts to clinicians, Lammer aimed to enhance the emotional communicative competence of clinicians (2009). …