1. Epistemology, Photo Elicitation, Reflexivity and Social Construction

❌: The nature of reality.
❌: The way we know what we know.
❌: The relevance of values.
❌: The role of the researcher, relationship with participants and the design of the research.

If you are ❌ the setting you’re more likely to be ❌, if you are ❌ you are more likely to be ❌.

❌ research combines a ❌ number of cases with a large number of variables and values.

❌ research examines a small number of variables and values over a ❌ number of cases.

Variable-centric research is ❌.

Case-centric research is ❌.

Design strategies for qualitative research includes

❌: Studying real-world situations as they unfold naturally; Nonmanipulative and noncontrolling; Openness to whatever emerges with a lack of predetermined constraints on findings.

❌: Openness to adapting inquiry as understanding deepens and/or situations change; avoids getting locked into a rigid design that eliminates responsiveness and pursues new paths of discovery as they emerge.

❌: Cases for study are selected because they are information rich and illuminative. Sampling is aimed at insight about phenomena, not empirical generalisation from a sample to a population.

Data collection and fieldwork strategies

❌: Observations that yield detailed, thick descriptions; inquiry in depth; interviews that capture direct quotations about personal perspectives and experiences.

❌: Direct contact with and gets close to the people, situation and phenomenon under study; the researchers' personal experiences are an important part of the inquiry and critical to understanding the phenomenon.

❌: Seeks vicarious understanding without judgement (neutrality) by showing openness, sensitivity, respect, awareness, and responsiveness. Being fully present.

❌: Attention to process; assumes change as ongoing whether the focus is on an individual, organisation, community or culture. Mindful of and attentive to system and situation dynamics.

Analysis strategies

❌: Assumes that each case is special and unique; the first level of analysis is being true to, respecting, and capturing the details of the individual cases being studied; cross-case analysis follows from and depends on the quality of individual case studies.

❌: Immersion in the details and specifics of the data to discover important patterns, themes, and interrelationships; begins by exploring, then confirming, guided by analytical principles rather than rules, ends with a creative synthesis.

❌: The whole phenomenon under study is understood as a complex system that is more than the sum of its parts; focus on complex interdependencies and system dynamics that cannot meaningfully be reduced to a few discrete variables and linear, causeeffect relationships.

❌: Places findings in a social, historical, and temporal context; careful about, even dubious of, the possibility or meaningfulness of generalizations across time and space; emphasizes instead careful comparative case analyses and extrapolating patterns for possible transferability and adaptation in new settings.

❌: The qualitative analyst owns and is reflective about her or his own voice and perspective; a credible voice conveys authenticity and trustworthiness; complete objectivity being impossible and pure subjectivity undermining credibility, the researcher’s focus becomes balance—understanding and depicting the world authentically in all its complexity while being self-analytical, politically aware, and reflexive in consciousness

❌ Devising an initial theme for taking pictures
❌ Selecting photographs for discussion
❌ Photovoice training
❌ Codifying issues, themes, theories
❌ Contextualising and storytelling
❌ Taking pictures

❌ provides ❌ the opportunity to tell tales about their ❌ experience

❌ such as ❌ can in part be seen as ❌ efforts to change ❌ about the world.

Examples of social constructions:

❌: The word cat, it doesn't look like a cat, but we as a society have decided it represents sounds that make up the word cat.

❌: Pink is for girls, blue is for boys.

❌: Eating bacon and eggs for breakfast is western, in Korea vegetable soup for breakfast. Fortune cookies are not a Chinese invention but Japanese, in America Chinese food is served with fortune cookies.

❌: Thumbs up means good or well done in western society. In Iraq, it means screw you. Discussion around Michelle and Barak Obama fist bumping and what it means, apparaently it can have links to terrorism?

❌: Women love shopping. American Indians are closer to nature.

❌ are not the same as ❌, unless the researcher fails to mention them.

Different researchers will approach a study from different ❌ or perspectives. This might lead to different, although equally ❌, ❌ of a particular situation under study.

While some may see these different ways of ❌ as a ❌ problem, others feel that these different ways of seeing provide a ❌, more developed understanding of ❌ phenomena.

Understanding something about the position, perspective, beliefs and ❌ of the researcher is an issue in all ❌, but particulary in ❌ research where the researcher is often constructed as the ❌.

❌ held beliefs are an idea or notion that appears to be ❌ to people who ❌ it (war, beneficiaries, beauty). However, if they can be ❌, they can be ❌ (i.e. the term queer is now a matter of pride).

In qualitative research, the researcher is the ❌.

❌ the process of a continual internal dialogue and critical self-evaluation of the researcher’s positionality.

Position in the field: Insiders or Outsiders. ❌ are generally favoured and don't have to make participants at ease. i.e. for tightly knit or religious communities. ❌ can be good as they may have an objective view but have to get participants to feel at ease.