Zones of comfort and imaginability: using Participatory Video Interviewing to explore ecologies of resilience in Guatemala City

ABSTRACT

We integrate participatory video, self-managed video interviews and video tour interviews in developing a method we call Participatory Video Interviewing, whilst exploring the experiences of young adults growing up in Guatemala City. We also use focus groups in order to gather participant reflections on the use of Participatory Video Interviewing. Our aim is to present the unique features and methodological contributions of Participatory Video Interviewing, as well as its advantages and limitations, using participant reflections. We illustrate this method using video case studies and focus groups with young people in Guatemala. Three main benefits of Participatory Video Interviewing were identified; the enhancement of the status of research participants through developing their technical, decision-making and storytelling skills; the facilitation of researching participant intersubjectivities; and the opening up safe, participant-selected research spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Interviews
• resilience
• video
• participatory
• Guatemala
• phenomenology

Introduction

This research project is situated in the theoretical context of resilience (Masten et al. 2014) and in the methodological context of qualitative visual methods. This paper has methodological focus. We present a novel qualitative visual method called Participatory Video Interviewing. We will argue that this method is particularly useful for working collaboratively with research participants and enabling their voices to be heard. Research into resilience amongst young people provides an ideal theoretical context for presenting this novel research method, since resilience theory is concerned with uncovering first-hand stories of overcoming challenges of growing up in challenging environments. The methodological and theoretical context for the paper will now be further explained.

Methodological context: participatory video interviewing

The methodological context for introducing a triangulated method for conducting participatory research is the integration of participatory video (Worth and Adair 1972), self-managed video interviews (Rogers 2020) and video tour interviews (Sudbury 2016). The use of participatory visual methods when working with young people follows authors who have explored youth self-worth and place-making with participatory visual methods (Groot and Hodgetts 2015). Participatory methods increase participant agency, enabling young people to ‘speak back’, affording an active participant role in research design (Brydon-Miller 1997). Using cameras to explore place-making, resilience and wellbeing can empower participants to express themselves in diverse ways (Migliorini and Rania 2017).

We will outline the methodological components of Participatory Video Interviewing; participatory video (Worth and Adair 1972), self-managed video interviews (Rogers 2020) and video tour interviews (Sudbury 2016), then describe Participatory Video Interviewing, outlining its strengths, unique contributions and limitations. We use primary data from fieldwork in Guatemala to generate methodological insights about Participatory Video Interviewing.

Participatory video

Participatory video involves a group or community producing videos (Blazek and Hraňová 2012), often about a topic which has been negotiated with researchers. This can challenge power relations in the research scenario (Kindon 2003), raising the status of participants from disadvantaged backgrounds (Blazek and Hraňová 2012). Worth and Adair (1972) developed this method, handing video cameras to Navaho participants to film daily routines. Subsequently, as video equipment has become more accessible, its potential has grown (Blazek and Hraňová 2012). Participatory video emphasises empowerment and advocacy whilst capturing the life-worlds of diverse groups (Sudbury 2016), and has previously been used with young people in the Global South to explore climate change (Plush 2009), gender equality (Waite and Conn 2011), educational engagement (Rogers 2020) and disaster adaptation (Haynes and Tanner 2015). This innovative practice enables access to young peoples’ life-worlds (Lewis and Lindsay 2000). When young people film, they actively participate in communities, constructing life-worlds through images. For those from disadvantaged backgrounds participatory video is valuable for generating evidence-based knowledge to enable policy-making (Haw 2005). We use participatory video to enable young people to show and tell experiences and challenges of living and working in Guatemala City, and of how they address them.

When using participatory video with young people whose language skills differ from those of researchers, verbal responses can be supplemented with multisensory knowledge. Working with Cambodian schoolgirls, Rogers (2020) noted that participatory video yielded voices across language and cultural barriers, owing to the embodied and emplaced nature of the data. Another advantage of participatory video is that it engages participants positively. When Blazek and Hraňová (2012) asked young people to film their Slovakian neighbourhoods, they reported that whilst researchers were motivated by supporting youth development and generating rich data, young people reported motivations like ‘trying something new’, ‘telling neighbourhood stories’, ‘group cohesion’, ‘attending an international meeting’. The experience of filmmaking can evidently be intrinsically rewarding, suggesting that participatory video can enhance participant wellbeing.

We use participatory video with seven participants (see Table 2) to generate video interview outputs, and to explore the experience of growing up in Guatemala from participants’ perspectives. Since the research was designed to explore resilience, we asked participants to focus their filming around risks encountered whilst growing up, and the (psychological, social, cultural, material) resources they used to address these risks (Masten et al. 2014). As participants were aware of this research focus, we invited them to film in locations which were relevant to these risks and resources.

Self-managed video interviews

Self-managed video interviews involve participants sharing cameras during filming, conducting interviews between themselves, making decisions about posing and answering questions, as used by Rogers (2020) during research with young people in Cambodia.

Participants set up and conduct interviews between themselves, often in places that are meaningful to them. Besides generating rich interview data, this raises participant status to that of technician and decision maker, providing valuable experience in generating interview questions and conducting interviews. This challenges the traditional power relations of social research, affording participants the status of researchers and data gatherers. The method also reflects existing interpersonal relationships between participants, enabling them to work in groups to negotiate the roles they take during filming and interviewing. This harnesses existing interviewee–interviewer relationships, since interviewer and interviewee are already well acquainted. This is often lacking when researchers are interviewing, since they need to build a rapport with participants.

We use self-managed video interviewing when working with participants in groups of two or three (see Table 2), to conduct interviews about resilience, within existing friendship groups. Each participant expressed a willingness to ask (whilst filming) and answer questions (whilst being filmed), with the camera being passed between participants during the interviews. Participants were aware that the research was about resilience, and they were asked to focus and locate their interviews around the risks they faced whilst growing up, and the (psychological, social, cultural, material) resources they used to sustain wellbeing (Masten et al. 2014). We did not provide pre-prepared interview questions.

Video tour interviews

Video tour interviewing (Sudbury 2016) is the third component of our method. This involves participants guiding a researcher through meaningful places whilst being interviewed by the researcher. We employed video tour interviews with individual participants. Whilst video tour interviews can be used with groups, we used it with individuals for posing researcher-based questions, reserving self-managed interviews for groupwork in order to utilise participants’ existing friendships. We also felt that video tour interviewing would enable the researcher to build a rapport with participants whilst talking on-the-go (Evans and Jones 2011), with many of the interview questions arising from spaces and locations where the participant led the researcher. We felt that group-based self-managed interviews (with existing friendships and participant-generated questions) were an effective complement to (individual-based, with researcher-generated questions) video tour interviews.

Pioneering this method, Pink (2006) invited participants to conduct video tours of their homes, encouraging participants to ‘describe and show what mattered to them’ (2006, 61). Video tour interviews enable interviewees to draw on phenomena that exceed the purely verbal when answering questions; spaces, artefacts and other non-verbal communication.

Video tour interviews combine features of participatory video (participant-held cameras) and observational video (Myerhoff 1986). During the tours, participants engage in filming and a second, researcher-held camera produces additional interview and contextual footage. Using two cameras thus creates a conversation, rather than an observation (Sudbury 2016). The resulting ‘third-voice’ (Kaminsky 1992; Sudbury 2016) emerges here, as participant and researcher contribute narratives. This dynamic third voice transcends those of informer and researcher, forming a collaboration (Kaminsky 1992). The third voice perspective follows work with women in rural India (Sudbury 2016), in research about gender and empowerment. In the present project, one element of empowerment comes from participants using the camera to tell stories which are complemented by the researcher perspective. Video tour interviewing takes us closer to young peoples’ experiences, engaging creativity, enthusiasm and agency (Sudbury 2016).

We present Participatory Video Interviewing, combining participatory video (Worth and Adair 1972), self-managed video interviews (Rogers 2020) and video tour interviews (Sudbury 2016) to identifying the challenges, risks (and strategies for overcoming risk) facing young adults growing up in Guatemala City. We used Participatory Video Interviewing here as it combines the advantages of its three component methods. Participatory video enables participants to use video to show and tell their stories in their chosen locations. Self-managed video interviews yield rich interview data (using self-designed interview questions) conducted within existing friendship groups. Video tour interviews enable participants to respond to researcher-generated interview questions in locations that are meaningful to participants. Combining these methods yields rich interview data, using participant-led strategies, engaging participants as data collectors as well as informants.

Our interview data are supplemented with focus group data (see Table 1).

Table 1. Participatory video interviewing (combining three methods) is supplemented with focus groups.

Method	Description	Present use
Participatory video	A group or community makes their own video	Participants asked to work in pairs or small groups to produce a short, 5-minute video about the challenges they face as young people in Guatemala City
Self-managed interviews	During participatory video, participants use cameras to conduct interviews between themselves	Participants asked to interview each other as part of the participatory video process
Video tour interviews	Participants guide the researcher through meaningful places whilst being interviewed and filmed by the researcher	Participants interviewed in meaningful places, by the researcher, as both produced footage
Focus groups	A group interview session, featuring all participants, conducted by the researcher	Participants evaluate the experience of participatory video interviewing

Research context

The research context centres on exploring resilience with young people entering the employment market in Guatemala City. Guatemala has a disproportionately young population, even for Latin America. Most of its population is under 19 years; the highest proportion of young people in Latin America. Whilst Guatemala has a vibrant youth culture, many young Guatemalans’ skills are underutilized in employment, compared with other nations (Bonilla and Kwak 2014). Over 30% of young Guatemalan children aged six to seven years fail first grade, with enrolment for young people aged between 12 and 14 years commonly under 40%. Over two million 15–24-year-olds in Guatemala lack necessary employment skills. Only 25,000 of 140,000 Guatemalan young people entering the labour market gain formal employment (U.S. Aid 2016).

This research is a qualitative exploration of resilience with seven youngsters from Guatemala City, aged between 18 and 23 (see Table 2). Whilst the focus of this paper is methodological, the research context is to explore resilience from an ecological perspective (Ungar 2011), by identifying the challenges, risks (and strategies for overcoming risk) facing these young adults in Guatemala City. This is a collaboration between two researchers from the UK (who are familiar with Guatemala) and two from Guatemala, one of whom has previously researched educational interventions. The authors have previous experience of developing participatory, visual methods whilst researching resilience with young people in Guatemala. During personal communications beforehand, we identified a need for further research with young people in Guatemala, incorporating participatory video, enabling participants to develop filmmaking. Learning practical filmmaking skills (shot composition, writing interview questions and filming interviews) during research is advantageous as it supplements data extraction with skills training, enhances participant engagement, enriches narratives (Kagan and Burton 2011) and benefits participants by providing an enjoyable experience.

Table 2. Participants and selected city zones for filming.

Names	Filming location
Case study 1; Carlitos, Oscar	Colonia Lavarreda, Zone 18
Case study 2; Lorena	Colonia La Brigada, Mixco Zone 7
Case study 3; Juan	Colonia de Santa Fe, Zone 13,
Case study 4; Teresa, Julio, Yesenia	Cerrito del Carmen, Zone 2

Resilience involves the mobilisation of psychological, social, cultural and material resources to sustain wellbeing in the face of risk (Masten et al. 2014). Whilst some treat resilience as an individualising category, we adopt an ecological perspective (Ungar 2011), seeing it as involving interactions between families and educational and community agencies that foster enabling environments (Theron and Engelbrecht 2012). Individuals, families, peers and communities pool resources to enhance wellbeing (Ungar 2011). We regard resilience as relational, incorporating individual, familial, educational and community-based protective factors (Masten et al. 2014).

Risks facing young Guatemalans include inequality, corruption and violence. Whilst structural inequalities affect young Guatemalans, we acknowledge the capacity of community-level interventions to ameliorate risk and enhance resilience incrementally (Masten et al. 2014). Our ecological approach sees such interventions as operating meso-systemically (Ungar 2011), with familial, educational and community-based agencies providing enabling environments for those at risk (Lee, Shek, and Kwong 2006).

To illustrate the innovative use of visual methods for researching resilience with young Guatemalans, one recent study facilitated training scholarships for young residents of areas of Guatemala City with high crime levels (Castañeda and Grazioso 2017). Using a mixed-methods approach, psychometric instruments measured the intervention’s effect on self-esteem, life-satisfaction, optimism and happiness. Qualitative photo-elicited interviews identified protective factors, collecting life-change narratives pre/post-intervention. Despite daily adversity, the protective value of family, education, peers and spirituality was identified, as were personal, transformative factors; love of learning, creativity, goal setting, self-determination and curiosity. More structural factors such as poverty, violence and transience were identified as risk bearing.

Subsequently, these authors stressed the importance of participatory visual methods for enhancing participant engagement. Therefore, we highlight the contribution of Participatory Video Interviewing to the methodological literature by demonstrating its potential for raising the status of participants to that of data gatherers, whilst enabling them to learn new skills (Castañeda and Grazioso 2017). This builds on our previous research with street-connected young people in Guatemala City, which combined participatory photography and participatory drawing to identify contextual factors contributing to wellbeing and place-making.

Our aim is to present Participatory Video Interviewing, to outline its unique features and methodological contributions, as well as its advantages and limitations, using participant reflections. We will illustrate this method using video case studies with young people in Guatemala, and from focus groups with those participants.

Research setting and phases

Participatory Video Interviewing was conducted with three females and four males (Table 2), selected from 12 young attendees of an ongoing resilience-building initiative at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. All participants were between 18 and 23 years old and were undergraduate students, and were invited to take part in the research by course leaders for the aforementioned resilience-building initiative. Four video interview case studies were conducted (see Table 2), across four city zones (Guatemala City is divided into 21 zones), four of which are represented in the case studies presented here (see Table 2). Each case study yielded a short video with interview transcript.

The project took place over four phases, spanning four weeks (Table 3).

Table 3. Phases of research.

Phases of the research	Description
Planning and preparation	Preliminary meetings with participants (Universidad del Valle de Guatemala). A two-day preparatory video camera workshop. Familiarisation with project aims. Establishment of Guatemala City zones for filming.
Video work	Video-based fieldwork in and around Guatemala City. Participants shot footage for a 5-minute video about the risks, challenges (and strategies for overcoming risk) facing them, using participatory video interviewing.
Reflection and evaluation	Focus group to reflect on the experience of producing video work. All seven participants attended, plus three additional members of the wider project.
Editing	Footage logged and edited by the researchers and one participant. Interview data transcribed and translated into English (for analysis) by research collaborator from Guatemala. Video worked returned to participants (with all footage). Additional editing of all videos into one short documentary, Streets of Resilience, for purposes of dissemination.
Analysis	All translated interview materials analysed by researchers.

We will use insights from our video case studies to illustrate how Participatory Video Interviewing generated methodological insights during our research. We will use these insights to illustrate key discussion points, advantages and challenges of our method.

Our case studies yielded video outputs that have been shared with participants. Videos combine participant-shot footage with second camera footage from the researcher (Sudbury 2016). The video footage came from participatory video, self-managed interviews and video tour interviews. Video footage was edited by the researcher team, in consultation with one participant (Juan), who wished be part of this process. The original case study video footage, containing all interviews from the study, was also edited to make a 30-minute video entitled Streets of Resilience, providing a more accessible resource for sharing with participants, dissemination and submission to documentary festivals. Interviews from the original videos (also made available to participants) are being analysed here. Our methods are designed to generate rich, participant-led interview data.

Our analysis is presented thematically, illustrated with quotes and video stills, following Monk (2019) and Sudbury (2016), who used interviews, supplemented with participants’ visual work, to explore emplaced experience. Urban experience can be conveyed in a sense of imaginability (Monk 2019), using supporting images created by participants.

Interview transcripts were translated from Spanish into English by one member of the research team, then analysed in English by the team using an interpretive, thematic approach, yielding ideographic accounts with patterns of convergence. Engaging in participant’s life-space, we maintained the ‘modest ambition of attempting to capture particular experiences as experienced for particular people’ (Smith, Jarman, and Osborn 1999, 16), thus adhering to a phenomenological approach. Transcripts were analysed by two researchers independently. For each case study, annotations were made to identify key, recurring descriptors. Subsequently, these were clustered into common themes (across participants). As there are no universal guidelines for analysing visual data in phenomenological psychology (Papaloukas et al. 2017), we devised a transparent strategy for incorporating participant-generated video stills into data presentation (Smith, Jarman, and Osborn 1999). A selection of images (see Figures 1–4) is presented here to add context.

Figure 1. Lorena films her room.

Figure 2. Juan films in Zone 13.

Figure 3. Oscar films in Zone 18.

Figure 4. Yesenia films in Zone 2.

In relation to resilience, we identified several themes relating to the challenges, risks (and strategies for overcoming risk) facing these young adults in Guatemala City. Risks predominantly related to high levels of crime and gang membership, whilst strategies for overcoming these included ecological factors such as, familial, community and civic support and belongingness, the importance of green spaces and spaces of safety, and spiritual, sporting and recreational networks. Since the focus of this paper is methodological, we will focus on the methodological insights rather than themes relating to resilience.

Ethical considerations

Fieldwork was conducted according to ethical standards set down by our university, requiring additional consent from participants appearing in images. All names are changed to protect participant anonymity. All participants were given access to videos during editing with an option to make suggestions to omissions. All interviews were conducted in public spaces, or within participants’ own domestic settings.

Methodological insights from using participatory video interviewing to explore ecologies of resilience in Guatemala City

Following interpretive, thematic analysis of our data, we present three main methodological themes, each of which constitute methodological contributions to the epistemology of qualitative, visual research.

Enhanced participant status

Participatory Video Interviewing can enhance the status of research participants and develop their technical, decision-making and storytelling skills. This affords participants more responsibility for the process of knowledge generation than do traditional interviewing and observational filmmaking, as the research content and context are largely participant-driven.

Enhanced research participant status is important for several reasons, especially when working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Firstly, when participants are collaborators rather than informants, interview data is generated from conversations, rather than knowledge extraction (Shotter 2008), reflecting a more equal researcher–participant relationship. When working with young people, establishing conversations, rather than question and answer sessions, yields a conversational rapport between researchers and participants which is likely to enrich the interview data. Secondly, enhancing participant involvement in locating research and designing interview questions improves participant engagement in and enjoyment of the research, adding fluidity and authenticity to interview data (Kagan and Burton 2011; Walker, Zlotowitz, and Zoli 2022). Interviews conducted by participants are generally more engaging when they themselves generate questions, partly because they have ownership of these questions. Also, for this study, participant-generated questions were based on a detailed knowledge of the local area and the challenges it holds. Thirdly, when using Participatory Video Interviewing with young people from backgrounds which differ from those of researchers, affording freedom to design and locate research means that interview questions, as well as locations, are selected using local knowledge, rather than the assumptions of the researchers.

One aspect of our case studies which illustrated enhanced participant status was the selection of filming locations. Filming and interview locations were selected by participants in order for them to highlight resilience narratives. For example, in Lorena’s video case study, she asked us to meet her in Colonia La Brigada, her residential neighbourhood, east of the city. Interviews with Lorena were conducted around her domestic spaces (Pink 2006), enabling her to highlight her family as a source of, and as a resource for addressing, everyday risks. Using a video tour interview technique, leading us around the house she shares with her mother, sisters and grandmother, she revealed a particular challenge from her upbringing.

Lorena largely grew up without her father, who left for the United States to find employment when she was five. Hence, for much of Lorena’s childhood and adolescence, her mother has assumed the role of primary carer, also looking after the house, with some help from her own mother (Lorena’s grandmother). This domestic scenario illustrates the roles of women who assume household leadership as a resilience-building factor (Smyth and Sweetman 2015). Whilst the heads of mixed-sex households are predominantly male (Drolet et al. 2015), many families in the Global South benefit financially from émigré fathers. Adverse cognitive and developmental effects can result (Zhang et al. 2014). Leading us around her home, using the video tour interviewing, Lorena emphasises the normality of her living space (Figure 1), articulating everyday details about home that might not have seemed important to a standard semi-structured interviewer, conducted in a neutral environment, chosen by the researcher. This exemplifies the importance of participant choice.

This my room. This is where I sleep. There is my bed, my television and my closet (Lorena).

When Lorena’s mum appears the method switches from video tour interview to self-managed interview and participatory video; Lorena filming and posing questions about narratives of resilience.

Lorena: She is my mum. She has provided the role of father and mother. Mum, what can you tell us?

Mum: Although your father is not here, thank God that you have known how to think and move on. The truth is that it is difficult to be alone with you. But with the help of God we move on.

In a moving scene, illustrating the challenges of her father’s absence, Lorena (camera in one hand, phone in the other) calls him in the U.S. In a frank exchange, filming her phone, waiting for his answer, the ringtone providing the soundtrack. He picks up.

Lorena: I want to interview you.

Dad: For you, whatever you want.

Lorena: How have you felt being all these years away?

Pause

Dad: Erm, sad in one part. On the other, not. Because it is for the welfare of the family

Courtesy of video tour interviewing, the researcher camera sees Lorena’s affective response

Do you know we miss you?

Pause

Ok. Always be careful. We’re losing the signal. (Lorena)

This scene (short sentences, pauses, affect) reveals the challenge she faces. Methodologically, it also demonstrates the flexibility of Participatory Video Interviewing; combining, and switching between, video tour interview, self-managed interviews and participatory video, mixing up participant and researcher perspectives.

From a researcher’s perspective, Lorena’s phone-call was a serendipitous ethnographic moment. Conceived by Lorena, it produced a scene which would not have been suggested by the researcher. The elevated status of Lorena, directing proceedings in a comfortable domestic space, allowed the surprising decision of Lorena to call her father, combining camera and phone, makes engaging footage.

A second case study, with a friendship group of Yesenia, Teresa and Julio, also illustrates the enhanced status of the researcher–participant. Taking control of the setting, like Lorena, the three friends asked us to meet them by an elevated Catholic church in a green space, with a city panorama. Cerrito del Carmen, north of the city, is a popular spot. It is well-documented that regular access to green space enhances wellbeing (Buchecker and Degenhardt 2015) in young urban dwellers (McCormick 2017). Psychological resilience is associated with regular access to good quality green spaces (Korpela et al. 2001), especially with family and friendship groups (Lamont, Welburn, and Fleming 2016).

Yesenia, Teresa and Julio enjoy passing the camera around in one of their favourite places. Using self-managed interviewing, they ask each other about the importance of the park for managing challenges of city living. A recurring theme is the contrast between the city’s challenges and the enabling green, safe space, especially when experienced with family or friends (Buchecker and Degenhardt 2015).

The beauty, the green, the trees. I love this place. Above all, it is about feeling safe in my community although in my community there is no such security. When I come, I know that I can share with my family, with my friends. (Teresa)

The importance of visiting safe, green spaces together is a recurring theme, as the friends discuss in their interviews. Here, Teresa explains the importance of her young family as a supportive network

Yesenia: What is the focus of your life?

Teresa: My son and my new family. I want to fight for them.

As in the previous case study, the decision to conduct self-managed interviews, combined with participatory video, participant-led participatory video. The space was familiar to them. Their chosen technique of passing the camera around and deciding where each person should speak, emphasised their status as researcher–participants.

This case study illustrates another aspect of enhanced participant status as the young filmmakers, using participatory video, set up a scene in the park in which friends and family members invited the researchers into the group shots. This raised issues of researcher positionality (Parr 2007). Other authors have discussed dynamic levels of ownership and control in collaborative video projects (Kindon 2003; Mistry and Berardi 2012). Here, we saw an indicative moment where collaborating participants, camera in hand, assume control of the filming process, highlighting the participatory nature of the filming and loosening researcher control.

These two case studies show how Participatory Video Interviewing affords an increased level of participant status and control in terms of setting a context for research, directing the filming process and experimenting with relative positionalities of research and researcher–participant.

As well as in the video case study data, enhanced participant status afforded by Participatory Video Interviewing was evidenced in our focus groups.

For example, a comparison was made between Participatory Video Interviewing and more traditional face-to-face interviews. Alberto¹ pointed out that the use of video tours, compared with standard interviewing, shifts the power balance from interviewer to interviewed, allowing, in this case, young people to describe and show what matters to them (Pink 2006)

You are practically living the experience through their own eyes, not through what the person interviewing is trying to interpret. If it is a face-to-face interview, you are practically answering questions, you are not expressing yourself. (Alberto)

Additionally, as Carlitos explains, participants leading the researcher, with a camera, through domestic spaces, reduce opportunities for misunderstanding which can be present in standard interviews

The difference of an interview and a video record is that in the interview only the questions are answered and sometimes the person does not understand. (Carlitos)

Focus group participants frequently referred to being empowered to open up and speak honestly. Evidently, our method enabled participants’ freedom to explore their identities through telling their stories (Sudbury 2016).

It always feels nice to open up to other people and tell your own story. I think it is personally a very rewarding experience. (Juan)

I felt it as a diary. It is good to take a little bit of your confidential life. The impact it had on me was to develop myself a little more as a person. (Teresa)

Here, Yesenia explains the positive effect of being able to handle the means of producing knowledge (Worth and Adair 1972), exploring daily living and allowing access to inner thoughts and emotions.

Knowing that I can grab a camera, express myself freely, with gestures with my hands, with my words  …  it did have a positive impact. The impact it had on me was to let me know myself more as a person, to know my skills and how I am going to face life. Opening up and expressing myself to a camera for me was a very emotional sensation, which made me know myself. (Yesenia)

Using video in a participant-led way, creating video tour interviews, evidently enhanced the willingness of participants to tell their stories and proactively involve themselves in where and how these stories should be created.

Going beyond individualising identities

A second methodological insight afforded by Participatory Video Interviewing relates to participant intersubjectivities (Blazek and Hraňová 2012). Participatory Video Interviewing involves techniques which go beyond recording individual experience, or reflecting inner thoughts. We sought to generate emplaced, interpersonal narratives, situated between places, participants and researchers (Monk 2019).

Combining participatory video, self-managed video interviews and video tour interviews affords flexibility to explore resilience-building strategies between individuals, in families, friendships and communities. From an ecological perspective (Ungar 2011), resilience inhabits interactions between families, friendships and communities (Theron and Engelbrecht 2012). Participatory Video Interviewing is more suited to an ecological approach than individual researcher-led interviews since they are situated within existing family and friendship relationships. Whilst other visual methods (photovoice, mobile interviews) also suit ecological approaches to resilience, we argue that Participatory Video Interviewing combines the advantages of its components (participatory video, self-managed video interviews, video tours) with the additional flexibility of switching between these methods as the research context changes (e.g. from a household, to a friendship outing, to a school). This could benefit future researchers who seek to explore participants’ experiences in a variety of family and community-based settings.

In the case study with Oscar and Carlitos, challenges of growing up were explored (at their request) whilst filming in their old school yard (during school vacation), situated in Zone 18, which has a relatively high crime level. Using self-managed interviewing, Oscar and Carlito moved around the school yard, filming and interviewing each other, discussing the challenges they face together, emphasising the importance of community in helping them to overcome them.

Participatory video also allowed them to capture their narrative on film. For an establishing shot, Oscar pans across the basketball court, to the background sound of children playing. Walking, talking, filming, the two describe the challenges of Zone 18.

When you’re in other zones and you say you’re from 18 they automatically evaluate you in case you’re a criminal or gang member. Here, we are judged by an address, a tattoo, or something else. They discriminate against you, saying ‘he’s from 18, he has a tattoo, he must be a gang member’. (Oscar)

Such stereotypes require socially sanctioned patterns of behaviour or support to enhance wellbeing (Lamont, Welburn, and Fleming 2016). Working together, Oscar and Carlitos identified such repertoires, often familial, and the provision of good quality housing and recreational facilities. Speaking over the sound of basketball-playing children, Carlitos explains his neighbourhood attachment.

I wholeheartedly want my two-year old daughter to live here and grow up in this environment. It is healthy, with sport and recreation. (Carlitos)

From an ecological perspective (Ungar 2011), the cultural repertoires at the levels of family and community, emphasise the importance of familial and civic support, enhancing inclusion, belonging and dignity (Lamont, Welburn, and Fleming 2016). The value of resilience as a community-based process, rather than an individualised phenomenon, is explored here by two friends together, situated in their community, highlighting their intersubjectivities.

Another case study, with Juan, used Participatory Video Interviewing to emphasise the importance of resilience as an intersubjective process, extending into familial and community spaces. We encounter Juan (at his request) as he films in the streets of Colonia Santa Fe, where he grew up, describing the value of his local church. Places of worship are spaces of resilience in Guatemala, enhancing belongingness. Here, we combine video tour interviews (Juan answering our questions as he leads us around the barrio), with participatory video; Juan films community spaces and provides his own voice-over, thus

This is the church I attended as a child. This place often has young people without much to do. They join gangs and so on. The church provides meetings or other entertaining activities. (Juan)

Another coping strategy Juan cites is sport, which can enhance community belongingness (Fader, Legg, and Ross 2019). Like Oscar, Juan leads us to a sports (soccer) field which he associates with feelings of belonging in his youth (Figure 2). Using participatory video, Juan narrates his own film, the challenge of making video adding a layer of autonomy and innovation which goes beyond that which would have been enabled using standard semi-structured interviewing.

This is a field where I used to play when I was little. I was part of a football team when I was ten. (Juan)

Like Oscar, Carlitos and Lorena, Juan evokes intersubjective repertoires of familial and civic support for facing risks of growing up in a neighbourhood where gang violence is commonplace, evidencing ecological resilience (Ungar 2011.) As well as spiritual and sporting networks, Juan invokes familial support. At his Mum’s house, combining self-directed interviewing (interviewing his mum) and video tour interviewing (leading us around the house), he discusses coping with the neighbourhood risks. His arm round his mum in their kitchen, embodying interdependency

She has helped me with my studies and all I have done. Basically, all I have achieved is based on what my parents have taught me. (Juan)

Juan’s case study demonstrates the challenges of growing up in Colonia Santa Fe, as well as the ecological resources for coping. As with our other case studies, Juan uses video tour interviewing and participatory video to show resilience-building practices through spiritual, sporting and familial networks of support.

The video case studies with Oscar and Carlitos, and with Juan, illustrate the strengths of Participatory Video Interviewing in demonstrating the ecological nature of resilience. Elements of intersubjectivity and ecological resilience are also clear in the case studies with Lorena and with Yesenia, Teresa and Julio. In combining the use of video tour interviewing, self-directed interviews and participatory video, we can appreciate the role of friendship, family, church and community in resilience building, and see how these ideas emerge out of participant-instigated interviewing.

The value of Participatory Video Interviewing for exploring resilience at an intersubjective level was evidenced in our focus group data.

Several participants noted the value of making videos with friends and companions. These sentiments reflect the importance of using video to tell stories which are not just personal, but interpersonal

For me it was a very nice experience. To be able to ask my colleagues, to film them and to be able to tell a little more about my family. Yes, I feel satisfied. (Teresa)

The act of making video narratives with others facilitated moments of revelation that became public and interpersonal, which was seen as different from merely speaking as an individual

There are things that one cannot avoid when expressing oneself, how one wants to be reflected towards other people and one cannot lie through a video because people go to see your expressions. If you say that you are happy, they will see if you are happy. (Teresa)

I felt really comfortable because I was being recorded between colleagues. Yes, I told a lot about my private life, confidential. (Yesenia)

This evidences the role of Participatory Video Interviewing for telling stories which transcend individualising testimonials, thus going beyond individually construed identities (Blazek and Hraňová 2012).

Safe spaces

Safe space was a recurring and multi-faceted theme in relation to our explorations of resilience. Our method thrived in the safe spaces where participants chose to film. Indeed, it is arguable that safe spaces are also a requirement for this video-based method.

In the case study with Oscar and Carlitos, who grew up in Zone 18, north of the city, the two friends used the safety of their former schoolyard as a base for their interviews. Zone 18 has a reputation as a crime ‘red zone’. From the security of their playground, panning out towards the less safe housing projects in the distance, they described challenges they faced growing up there, and strategies for overcoming them. Oscar pans across the distant housing projects (see Figure 3), describing the importance of social support for the community.

The street up there has a panorama across the city. The city took the initiative to paint most of the houses, giving it a beautiful look. (Oscar)

Oscar and Carlitos had told us that they did not feel safe using cameras around the housing, but participatory video enabled them to film and talk about these projects from a safe distance. The decision to film safely in the playground was partly taken to offer protection from the busy street outside. Additionally, it was a practical consideration to aid sound quality. Both reasons offer a compromise to the ethnographic aspiration of working with participants in their life-space. However, it also illustrates a requirement of a risk-free environment for using Participatory Video Interviewing.

In the case study with Yesenia, Julio and Teresa, we saw the value of the self-managed interview method for enabling participants to document safe, resilient spaces. Filming and talking in safe spaces are ideal ways of conveying narratives of imaginability (Soini 2001). Whilst young people develop internal (cognitive) images of their surroundings, they also apprehend space actively, creatively, producing tangible outputs to materialise meaning; visual maps (Monk 2019), soundscapes (MacFarlane 2019), photographs and postcards. During our case studies, participants created videos to document the challenges they face and their strategies for overcoming them. We invited participants to choose spaces in Guatemala City to carry out their interviews. In several cases, participants selected spaces they visit regularly to help seek refuge from risk; these spaces included schools, recreational green spaces, sports grounds and domestic settings. Monk (2019) challenged young participants to imagine their city visually (following training) to produce records of place through creative mapping. In guiding young participants to creatively represent their city, we too invited participants to become ‘creators of the city’ (Monk 2019) whilst addressing challenges of late adolescence. As the friends explain below, safe, resilient spaces afford this. Citing protective factors for mitigating against risk, Teresa and Yesenia discuss how they regard the green recreational space at Cerrito del Carmen as a place of relative safety and tranquillity, away from the risks they encounter in the city. Specifically, we see below how Yesenia regards the park as safe enough to use a video camera

Julio: Why did you choose this place to film?

Teresa: For the trees it has. Nature is very important to me.

Using self-managed interviews, walking, talking and handing the camera between themselves, the three friends create a visual record of a spatial refuge from city living. Guatemala City lacks green spaces. Yesenia expanded on this, guiding us (Figure 4), explaining the attraction

I chose this place because it is very safe. I love nature. (Yesenia)

Yesenia evokes the safety of the park in relation to the pace and dangers of city. Panning from the hill, Yesenia explains

I can’t use a camera in my community because of the insecurity. Here it’s very beautiful. (Yesenia)

These video case studies illustrate the value of Participatory Video Interviewing for documenting safe spaces which act as resources for resilience-building, and which, with a long lens, can sometimes be filmed at a safe distance.

The use of Participatory Video Interviewing to access safe spaces for participants was also evidenced in our focus groups. Focus group participants frequently referenced comfort zones (spatial and methodological) they experienced during video work. Spatially, as Yesenia intimates below, participant-led video work facilitates working in geographical spaces where participants feel comfortable.

We could not record in our community because it is very dangerous. We had to go to record in a very nice place, Cerrito del Carmen. The nature and the air of security and peace that is lived there helped us a lot. (Yesenia)

Being involved in decisions about where interviews take place, as well as leading the interviewer there and showing it through film, also enables young people to operate in methodological comfort zones (Waite and Conn 2011; Haynes and Tanner 2015). Participant groups who are often marginalised gain a foothold in decisions about the production of knowledge (Haynes and Tanner 2015). Hence, Participant Video Interviewing offers a youth-centred approach that operates in a methodologically comfortable space

I like the video resource a lot. One can go and record specifically what one wants to show. (Juan)

I was nervous but I feel that as one is recorded more, the more confidence one has. Then I entered my comfort zone and it made it more secure. (Yesenia)

Participatory Video Interviews enabled interviewing in contexts where participants felt physically comfortable (spatial comfort zones), and felt themselves methodologically in control.

Conclusions, discussion and limitations

Our aim was to present Participatory Video Interviewing, outline its unique features and methodological contributions, its advantages and limitations. We have illustrated our method with insights from case studies and focus groups. Analysis yielded three main themes, each contributing to the literature on qualitative, visual research.

Firstly, Participatory Video Interviewing enhances the status of research participants, developing their technical, decision-making and storytelling skills. This affords participants more responsibility for the process of knowledge generation than do traditional interviewing and observational filmmaking. Participants also reported a high level of engagement during a research process which enabled them to develop skills and work together in friendship groups. High levels of engagement were demonstrated by the length of time they devoted during the interviews, and by their willingness to travel across the city and further participate in the reflective focus group. The focus group quotes presented during this paper also reflect this high level of engagement during the project.

Secondly, Participatory Video Interviewing takes us beyond researching individualising identities, affording the exploration of participant intersubjectivities.

Thirdly, the method facilitates the use of physical and methodological safe spaces. It also affords the flexibility to switch between its component methods depending on participants’ feelings of comfort and expertise.

A number of further discussion points arose from using Participatory Video Interviewing.

Firstly, in line with our participatory approach, we recognise the positive response of our participants. As reflected in the focus group, participants appreciated communicating beyond verbal responses, and noted how participatory methods enabled access to geographical and methodological comfort zones. Arguably, our approach enriched these narratives, increased participant engagement, raising their status to that of data gatherers, enhancing practical video-making skills, thus challenging a research culture which writes of, rather than with, participants who are commonly represented as ‘passive victims requiring protection’ (Haynes and Tanner 2015, 357). We believe that our methods facilitated research which was reciprocal, collaborative, giving something back to participants (Rogers 2020, Haynes and Tanner 2015).

We also identify practical limitations. For example, during the preparatory phase, more time could have been invested in camera-handling guidance to enhance the quality of the video recordings, for example to improve sound recording and steadiness of filming. Nevertheless, combining participant-led video with a second, researcher-operated camera, partially addressed this limitation (Sudbury 2016), so this limitation did not impede the overall research outcomes. Whilst the use of two cameras dilutes the participatory credentials of the video output, the approach enhances the disseminatable, outputs.

In relation to self-managed interviewing, a limitation is that its effectiveness is restricted to participants preferring to work in pairs or threes, rather than individually (although in these instances we were able to switch to video tour interviewing). Additionally, although younger people may lack confidence in front of the camera, during self-managed interviewing participants are not obliged to answer questions, and may instead participate (or not) in another way, such as writing interview questions. However, as our participants were established friendship groups, each of them evidently felt comfortable enough to fully take part both on both sides of the lens.

In relation to video tour interviews, a potential limitation of working with young people is that these are likely to be undertaken in parents’ households. Hence, video tours in domestic spaces could at times reflect a high level of self-consciousness. However, arguably, participants who filmed in domestic spaces did so because they felt comfortable there, so these spaces were ideal for documenting challenges of growing up and resources for overcoming them.

We also identify three potential challenges in using participatory video in urban Guatemala. Firstly, it can be dangerous to handle expensive equipment in public (Wheeler 2009). We chose to film with researchers’ compact camcorders to avoid obliging participants to use their own equipment, and were unsure beforehand whether all participants would have smartphones. Using researcher camcorders also simplified training, since all printed camera guides were standardised. The potential challenge of using expensive equipment in public was largely avoided by careful selection, by participants, of relatively safe sites (playground, domestic setting). A second challenge is that cameras can hamper sensitive discussion. This was eased by the use of self-managed interviews in existing friendships, wherein participants felt comfortable. A third challenge is that the method requires technological literacy, which may be excluding. We could have improved upon this with more preparatory video training. We acknowledge that a lack of technical skills can reinforce researcher–participant power imbalances (Wheeler 2009).

Another methodological discussion point relates to the so-called third voice in video-based research (Kaminsky 1992). We argue that our video case studies amplify young peoples’ voices whilst engaging creativity and enthusiasm. However, whilst producing collaborative resilience narratives, our claims to genuine coproduction are compromised. Whilst participant-led images raise participant voices and status, meanings are also diluted when researchers (Pauwels 2015) have a greater say in reporting the research. Overall, whilst our methods incorporate participatory elements, the study can be regarded as collaborative, wholly participatory.

We have heard participants’ experiences of risk and resilience, and their reflections on using Participatory Video Interviewing. However, whilst our research methods may be innovative, we do not see them as definitive or ontologically bounded. Whilst we accessed young peoples’ experiences, we do not see each individual participants’ experiences as discrete (Mayes 2015). Nevertheless, by combining three visual-based interview methods we have provided a set of enriched, engaged interviews, whose design and locations were largely participant-led. Furthermore, the methodological insights we have drawn come from experiential zones wherein our participants felt comfortable to tell their stories. Weighing up the insights and limitations of our method, we argue that the flexibility and insights afforded by Participatory Video Interviewing constitute an innovative methodological strategy which supersedes and builds upon the advantages of each of its three methodological component parts, and which will prove useful for future researchers looking to do flexible, participatory video-based work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund. https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/internationalfunding/global-challenges-research-fund/.

Notes

1 Alberto did not take part directly in the case studies, but is part of the ongoing resilience-building initiative at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, and was keen to attend our focus group.