Use Of Visual Research Methods Research Articles

Intergenerational place-based digital storytelling: a more-than-visual research method

ABSTRACT The use of visual research methods with young people—such as photo diaries and mental mapping—risks reproducing a focus on local-scale micro-politics at the expense of broader contextualization. We contend that combining visual and narrative methods through digital storytelling enables young people to represent their everyday lives within broader social and political processes. Working in post-conflict urban areas in Lebanon, we found that this method allowed young people to disrupt the dominant geopolitical narratives that so often frame their lives and surroundings. This paper provides a detailed explanation of our place-based approach to digital storytelling, including a discussion of ethical and practical concerns. Our approach eschews the individual testimonial technique typical of digital storytelling. Rather than a tool for introspective self-reflection, place-based digital storytelling encourages inter-subjective extrospection, a process of exploring how individual stories unfold within broader geopolitical contexts.

The use of photo elicitation for understanding the complexity of teaching: a methodological contribution

ABSTRACT Educational research results on teachers and teaching are often criticized due to the lack of connection between knowledge production in academic settings and the reality of teachers’ work. One of the main critiques of research is the lack of methodological options to address the complexity of teaching. In fact, research results have often been considered to be decontextualized and far removed from teachers’ every day practices. Based on a study of teacher quality in La Araucanía, this paper is a methodological reflection on the use of Visual Research Methods, particularly photo elicitation, as a method to address the complexity of teaching. Hereby, I explore three contributions from using photo elicitation in research on teachers and teaching: First, the use of pictures provides rich descriptions of teachers’ context of practice. Second, the use of pictures helps to understand better what teachers mean and interpret. Third, it allows researchers and participants to negotiate the interpretations of pictures, by contrasting participants’ views viz-à-viz researchers’ perceptions about the contexts where teachers develop their practice.

Response art in art therapy practice and research with a focus on reflect piece imagery

ABSTRACT This ‘practice innovation’ paper provides an overview of the development of ‘response art’ which is growing as an integral part of routine clinical practice in art therapy. I provide a literature review of the use of art therapist generated images made before, during and following clinical work. There is a particular focus on post-therapy ‘reflect piece’ imagery which is the subject of the research described in this paper. The purpose of the research is to examine practitioners experience when using art immediately following a session, and how making art in this context, may facilitate the discharge and release of powerful or complex affects and part-processed feelings aroused during their clinical work. Secondly, how developing the themes, gestures and visual motifs systematically between sessions may deepen empathy and attunement, and thirdly, how both forms of visual expression may contribute to the supervisory process. Plain-language summary Response art refers to the visual, creative, art-based responses made by art therapists as part of clinical practice. The generic term is ‘clinical art-making’ and refers to art made in response to any client-related experience, work-based dynamic material or experiences deriving from the clinical context. The term ‘reflect piece imagery’ is used to describe the artworks therapists make immediately following an art therapy session and is the focus of this paper. The potency and clinical usefulness of this form of response art has led to an art-based research project which I have been leading over the past two years. The second part of this paper presents examples from the research and draws together the findings from this and previous research to form an evidence-base from which practice methods and further research in this area can be developed. The literature review traces the emergence of the use of clinical art-making in art therapy practice in North America and Britain and refers to the definition, contexts and application of therapist generated artworks. The current research design described is art-based and demonstrates the use of visual research methods (McNiff, 1998, 2013, 2018) which may also be of interest to the reader as well as contributing to the practitioner-researcher paradigm.

Probabilistic reasoning and the rhetorical reconstruction of DNA profiling evidence

The co-production of forensic–scientific knowledge claims, across disciplinary boundaries, requires the mobilisation of separate (and competing) domains of expertise. The task of the interdisciplinary socio-legal researcher – exploring the collaborative practices which contribute to the construction of DNA profiling evidence – is, therefore, a complex one. It requires an understanding of the ways in which the heterogeneous groups of institutional actors, who populate the criminal justice system, set about capturing biological substrates. Further, it requires the researcher to follow a complex series of laboratory translations: technological metamorphoses, which serve to convert evidential material into graphical representations, textual inscriptions, and probabilistic outputs. This paper explores the ways in which these dynamic processes may be more comprehensively understood through the use of visual research methods. Further, it demonstrates the capacity for socio-legal modelling to contribute to interdisciplinary forensic research.

Introduction to a visual sociology of smaller nations in Europe

In the introduction to this special issue there is an exploration of how a visual sociological perspective can be used both to visually represent and to better understand some of the salient features of smaller nations in contemporary Europe. In the first section there is a focus on the increasing theoretical and empirical emphasis on the visual in everyday life and the renewed social scientific interest in the nation. Following that there is an examination of the concept of ‘smallness’ with respect to the literature on smaller states and nations, and the use of visual research methods to represent and help to explain the particular characteristics of smaller nations in Europe. In the second section there is a summary of the six comparative case-study articles that constitute this special issue: dealing with Serbia and Croatia, Belgium, Hungary, Greenland, the Basque Country in Spain, and with Ireland and the European Union. In the articles a range of visual sociological approaches, from conceptual to ethnographic, are applied, drawing on photographs, paintings and cognitive schemas to visually represent and examine specific features of smaller European nations. While political and economic characteristics of smallness are significant in the articles, most of the focus is on socio-cultural issues relating to themes like nationalism, national identity, migration and diversity, as well as emotions such as national pride and shame, and perceptions related to threats and vulnerabilities.

Visual methods in leisure research

The use of visual imagery and photography in the research process is a valuable addition to traditional research methods. Visual research methods have been successfully used to engage diverse groups and communities and empower participants in the research process. While many advantages of the use and applicability of visual methods have been described in the leisure literature, certain disadvantages do exist. This study explores potential challenges related to the use of visual research methods. The purpose of this study is to caution leisure researchers to consider underlying challenges related to visual methods that may be specific to individual research projects and contexts. In so doing, I discuss specific challenges related to collecting and analyzing data gathered using the photo-elicitation method in conjunction with in-depth interviews in an ethnography of an urban farmers' market.

One step closer to the field: visual methods in marketing and consumer research

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the use of visual research methods in the area of recent marketing and consumer research. Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis was used to investigate visual method in articles from Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Marketing; Journal of Marketing Research; Journal of Marketing Management; Consumption, Markets, and Culture and Qualitative Market Research. Abstract, key words and methodology sections of all articles published in these six journals from 2002 to 2012 were scanned to identify which of them applied visual methods in their studies. The selected articles were then closely analyzed to discover how visual research methods were used and in what manner did they contribute to the marketing and consumer behavior discipline. Findings – This study found that a growing number of marketing and consumer researchers utilized visual methods to achieve their research goals in various approaches such as cultural inventories, projective techniques and social artifacts. Visual method is useful when research deals with children who are not fully developed and able to comprehend text messages and also advantageous when investigating informants’ metaphorical thoughts about a subject or the content of their mind. Originality/value – This paper examined how visual methods have assisted marketing and consumer researchers in achieving their goals and suggests when and how researchers can utilize the visual methods for future research.

Social representations of electricity network technologies: Exploring processes of anchoring and objectification through the use of visual research methods

The aim of this study was to explore everyday thinking about the UK electricity network, in light of government policy to increase the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources. Existing literature on public perceptions of electricity network technologies was broadened by adopting a more socially embedded conception of the construction of knowledge using the theory of social representations (SRT) to explore symbolic associations with network technologies. Drawing and association tasks were administered within nine discussion groups held in two places: a Scottish town where significant upgrades to the local transmission network were planned and an English city with no such plans. Our results illustrate the ways in which network technologies, such as high voltage (HV) pylons, are objectified in talk and drawings. These invoked positive as well as negative symbolic and affective associations, both at the level of specific pylons, and the 'National Grid' as a whole and are anchored in understanding of other networks such as mobile telecommunications. We conclude that visual methods are especially useful for exploring beliefs about technologies that are widespread, proximal to our everyday experience but nevertheless unfamiliar topics of everyday conversation.

Visual Analysis. New Developments in the Interpretative Analysis of Video and Photography

The use of visual research methods has become increasingly widespread throughout the social sciences. From their origins in disciplines like social anthropology and sociology, visual research methods are now firmly entrenched in major fields of inquiry, including sociology, health and nursing studies, educational research, criminology, human and cultural geography, media and cultural studies, discursive and social psychology, management and organisation studies, political science and policy analysis. The rapid development of information technology, facilitating the creation and editing of digitised data, and computer-based techniques for the storage and management of visual data, means that new methodological approaches are being developed and are envisaged for the near future. Some important and promising approaches are presented in this issue by a number of researchers from different angles of the interpretive social sciences.

Use of Visual Research Methods to Measure Standards of Quality for Parks and Outdoor Recreation

Visual research methods have been adapted and incorporated into measuring standards of quality for parks and outdoor recreation. This paper reviews and assesses this research. Visual research methods offer several potential advantages over conventional narrative/numerical questions to measure standards of quality. For example, visual methods can help “standardize” such research, focus more directly and exclusively on the treatment variables under study, offer a more elegant means of communicating variables that are difficult or awkward to describe in narrative/numerical terms, and can be used to represent conditions that are difficult to find in the field or that do not currently exist. Research suggests that visual research methods may be most appropriate in frontcountry or other high use density contexts, may result in more valid or realistic estimates of visitor standards of quality in such applications, meet generally accepted standards of validity, and may be methodologically robust. Technological and societal trends suggest that visual research methods may continue to evolve into more dynamic formats and offer opportunities for expanded applications in the future.