Photo-Interviewing to Explore Everyday Occupation: Benefits and Issues

Abstract

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

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all who participated in this study. It was financially supported by grants from the University of Southern Denmark, the University College Zealand, the Research Foundation of the Danish Association of Occupational Therapists, the Research Initiative for Activity Studies, and the Danish Rheumatism Association.

Notes

1 Hand osteoarthritis is one of the most common disorders of the joint affecting 55-70% of the adult population over the age of 55 (Dahaghin et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2007). It is a long-term condition that impacts fine motor skills. Pain is a predominant symptom and is known to limit the individual's functions physically, psychologically and socially in the patients’ environments.

2 Prompted by Warren (2005, p. 865) the process of ‘taking’ a photograph is referred to throughout the paper as ‘making’ a photograph when referring to the study and when meaningful.