Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation

By Douglas Harper. 2002

3,800 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Museology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f30a47a62ae6d859c4115f236ff2fe38832b5bf8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Museology

1. P. Woolner
2. R. O’Connell
3. J. Sheridan
4. F. Reynolds
5. K. Chamberlain
6. L. Tiplady
7. K. Inder
8. A. Kable

In Sociology and Political Science

1. J. Sheridan
2. A. Dupuis
3. K. Chamberlain
4. R. Sandford
5. A. Radley
6. P. Woolner
7. R. O’Connell
8. F. Reynolds

Citations in the corpus

• Elicitation Techniques: Getting People to Talk About Ideas They Don’t Usually Talk About (2015, background): “Their reactions can reveal community values, attitudes, and beliefs, as well as the meaning that participants attribute to aspects of the local setting (Collier & Collier, 1986; Harper, 2002; Wagner, 1979; Wang & Burris, 1997).”
• Visual Methodologies in Qualitative Research (2017, methodology): “…ethnic groups, in the social identities of children, in the importance of clothing for adolescents, the work environment (Harper, 2002), in parents accounts of longterm distress after the preterm birth of a child (KantrowitzGordon & Vandermause, 2016), and in visual autobiographies (Harper, 2002).”
• Positive youth development and physical activity/sport interventions: mechanisms leading to sustained impact (2013, background): “The main research activities in these case studies were observation of programme activities, interviews with key adults and youth participants, focus group discussions, open-ended surveys, semi-structured reflective journals and structured feedback sheets (e.g. Clark and Moss 2001; Oliver and Lalik ”
• Considering Photographs Never Taken During Photo-production Projects (2007, background): “This type of research combines insights from photographs and words to explore the textures of participant lifeworlds and how people negotiate what they see and know ( Harper, 2002 ; Radley and Taylor, 2003a , 2003b ).”
• ‘Colour and communion’: Exploring the influences of visual art-making as a leisure activity on older women's subjective well-being (2010, result): “In line with the suggestions of Harper (2002), this aspect of the method deepened the interview.”
• Using Photographs to Research Organizations: Evidence, Considerations, and Application in a Field Study (2012, methodology): “In addition, Harper (2002) suggests that the use of photographer diaries about the experience of making photographs (what he terms contextual validity) may mitigate some concerns about reactivity.”
• Timelining: visualizing experience (2011, methodology): “Visual methods research has largely used photographs, often made or created specifically for the research (Bell, 2002; Collier and Collier, 1986; Harper, 2002; Hodgetts et al., 2007; Hurdley, 2007; Keller et al., 2008; Morgan and Pritchard, 2005; Pink, 2001; Radley and Taylor, 2003; Rose, 2007).”
• On showing and being shown plants - a guide to methods for more-than-human geography (2015, methodology): “Auto-photography and photo elicitation use the provocative power of images (Bell 2012; Harper 2002; Latham and McCormack 2009) to encourage gardeners to reflect on plants (Hitchings 2007b; Hitchings and Jones 2004, 12).”
• Pictures are necessary but not sufficient: Using a range of visual methods to engage users about school design (2010, methodology): “A related criticism, made by both Banks and the sociologist, Douglas Harper, is that visual methods can become ‘‘an end in themselves’’ (Banks 2001, p. 178; Harper 2002, p. 20), producing observations ‘‘that beg for greater theoretical and substantive significance’’ ( Harper 2002, p. 19 ).”
• “Beyond words”: a researcher’s guide to using photo elicitation in psychology (2017, methodology): “Harper (1986, 2002) was one of the first to use the term “photo elicitation,” describing it simply as using photos in a research interview.”
• The use of visual methods with children in a mixed methods study of family food practices (2013, positive): “In particular, researchers have proposed that visual methods may be especially appropriate to the study of everyday life (e.g. Sweetman, 2009), suggesting that these may ‘ break the frame ’ (Harper, 2002) of taken for granted routines and ways of seeing.”