Description

Photo elicitation refers to any approach in which participants are shown photographic images and asked questions relevant to the research topic. The photographs, usually a series of related images in printed or digital form, provide a means of stimulating comments, memories and open discussion. Photo elicitation can be used in structured or semi-structured interviews. It is a useful tool for exploring abstractions, generalities and reactions to specific events or themes. Interviewing with images can also be used to gather encyclopaedic information, document knowledge distribution within a community and validate data gathered during other interviews or field methods.

Collecting the data

One approach, the photographic essay, involves compiling a series of images that reflect the characteristics and values of the informant’s culture, as selected by the fieldworker. The photographs are presented during the course of a semi-structured interview in order to initiate a general or philosophical discussion led by the informant’s reaction to each image. Photographic content may include, for example, the various stages of the interviewee’s lifecycle, such as birth, childhood, marriage and funeral rites, and can provide a useful prop for exploring the passage of wo/man through his/her culture.

With carefully timed and insightful questions, this field method can help to establish rapport during the early stages of fieldwork and can be a useful means of discussing cultural subtleties that are otherwise only appreciated through direct experience. Where fieldwork is brief, and direct experience of events such as birth or death is unlikely, photographs provide a visual reference point from which more detailed information can be derived. Furthermore, photographs shift the attention away from the interviewee and provide a less direct and non-intrusive method for eliciting personal or cultural information.

Informants’ responses can be recorded in a field notebook or – if culturally acceptable – with a digital recorder. They can become a meaningful and important part of the researcher’s field notes and can be cross-referenced against information gathered during other interviews or field methods. The selection, stimuli and language facility of the imagery determine the success of the venture.

Photographs can also be used for investigating specific research questions, as opposed to themes or generalities. Examples include photographs of housing surveys as a means of updating the surveys, landscape images to help map an area and identify cultural landmarks, or photographs of animals or plants to ascertain the knowledge, names and cultural value ascribed to them by informants. For example, the photographic identification approach (a type of specimen identification task) uses images in a structured interview as props to elicit responses to the same set of questions, such as “Does this object have a name?”, “Where does this object come from?” or “Does this object have a use?”.

An ethnobotanical example is the use of plant images to discover the local names and uses of plants. This can be used to document the distribution of ethnobotanical knowledge within a community. You first have to decide which plants to include in the series of photographs, based on your research question. For example, if the goal is to elucidate the life form classification of plants within a given area, you would have to include species that represent different plant habits, use categories and ecological zones. However, if the goal were to investigate the distribution of knowledge pertaining to wild food plants within a field site, then you would choose local edible plant species. It is a good idea to work with key informants in order to decide which plants are culturally important and therefore most applicable to the study [see also free listing and ranking for additional ways of assessing cultural importance].

Recording the data

It is important to record the names, uses and other comments as participants give them. You might find it useful to bring a printed table to the interviews, with respondents’ names in the rows and the names of objects depicted in the photographs in the columns. Responses can be recorded as the values in the table; in an ethnobotanical interview this would include the name, use, life form, origin and other observations. The data can later be coded in a matrix for analysis, giving for example a sum of the number of uses given by each individual or “1” for a correct name and “0” for an incorrect name. Recording the interview can be helpful if, for example you are unsure how to write the names correctly, or if the respondent wishes to offer additional insights that fall outside of the structured data you are seeking to obtain.

Analysing the data

A matrix of coded data can be analysed in a variety of ways. If you are confident that you have a reliable grasp of which responses are culturally appropriate (see consensus analysis) you can assess the expertise of the various respondents and attempt to understand why some people give “wrong” answers (for example, lack of experience or education in a particular domain). Alternatively, you might be interested in exploring the patterns of answers that emerge and how they may correspond to the different social groups in your sample of informants.

The data collected through ethnobotanical photo elicitation provide an example of these modes of analysis. If you are confident that you have determined the “correct” local names and uses of the plants, you can rate informants on how close they come to providing the correct answer. In this way, the exercises can produce “knowledge scores”, which can be further evaluated according to variables such as age, sex, educational level and occupation.

In situations in which you find multiple correct names and uses for a plant – or if you do not know the culturally correct answers – it is better to assess the patterns of responses that people give without a priori coding of which are “correct” and “incorrect”. This will allow you to discern patterns of responses that may provide insights into variations in the knowledge of different social groups, such as men and women, young and old, or members of different ethnic groups.

Helpful hints:

In order to maintain informant attention we suggest using an upper limit of thirty photographs in any interview session or task.

Once you have assembled the images for a photo elicitation task, consider using them in other research techniques such as pile sorting.

Apart from images of common and familiar objects, include unusual ones to test the level of respondents’ expertise. Consider presenting the same object twice, and also objects that are close in appearance but different, to assess consistency in identification.

Images must be of high and even quality. For ethnobotanical photo elicitation, the plant parts (for instance flowers, fruits and/or roots) used by local people should be clearly depicted in the photographs to identify species.

Be on the lookout for specialists: some respondents may not fit the general pattern of responses given by others because they have particular expertise in the domain that you are researching. Avoid jumping to the conclusion that unusual answers are necessarily wrong because they do not fit patterns of cultural consensus.

Verify peoples’ ability to identify images by cross checking the ability to identify or describe real objects “in the flesh” with those depicted in photographs. For example, you can check responses informants give on photos of useful plants with a tree trail interview including the same species.

Strengths

+ Photographs focus and sharpen the memory and can be used to assess informants’ knowledge of specific topics.

+ Photo elicitation is useful for
identifying, in the early stages of fieldwork, “experts” or knowledgeable individuals who may later become key informants or hired as field research assistants
investigating folk classification systems and gathering vernacular names of flora and fauna
understanding the ways informants identify and distinguish objects.

+ Interviewing with photographs can be useful for alleviating the discomfort informants can experience during intense periods of questioning.

+Photographs are engaging. They offer the informant a gratifying sense of self-expression, as he/she is able to explain and identify the image content and educate the interviewer in the process. Furthermore, photographic content that includes the informants may generate considerable amusement and as a novelty can engage surrounding family members who are eager to see the images. This can lead to group discussions, which may be helpful for revealing differences of opinion or understanding within a household unit.

Weaknesses

- Photographs do not always adequately represent an object in its natural context. Seeing something in the flesh is distinct from viewing a photograph and in contexts where people are unfamiliar with photographs, items may be misidentified because they are “out of context”. For example, if images are being used to elicit information about flora and fauna, informants’ responses may significantly differ from the data collected in relation to living or collected biological material.

- In some communities people are uncomfortable being photographed or in general with the depiction of people or even animals. In these areas, photo elicitation may have to be limited to plants, artefacts and other images that are culturally appropriate.