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Photography has been used as a research tool by field anthropologists and as a technique to empower special populations and catalyze advocacy groups and policy makers. In the case described in this paper, photography was used to develop a survey to study alcohol expectancies among Thai adolescents. A multicultural research team faced generational, linguistic and cultural barriers in seeking to understand Thai adolescent alcohol use well enough to write useful questions for a proposed alcohol expectancy survey questionnaire. The creative use of photography enabled the research team to gather information across generational, linguistic and cultural lines; it allowed representatives of the population of interest (adolescents) to express themselves without the imposition of an organizational framework by the investigators; and it generated new information on alcohol use and expectancies. Group discussions of the photographs revealed nuances and subtleties of behaviors and expectations involving alcohol that might otherwise not have emerged. The results of this project were used to refine an expectancy measurement scale to be used in the second stage of this study of adolescent alcohol expectancies.Using photography -3 Survey results are only as good as the questions askedTo improve our understanding of the context of health behaviors, survey research provides acceptable estimates of many variables. However, the quality of the data generated depends on the adequacy of the questions asked. It is difficult to write survey questions to explore social issues that have not been previously studied, that are rapidly changing, and that exist among groups quite different from the investigator's own. The absence of a database to establish concurrent validity and the absence of true expert panels further complicates the development of a good survey instrument.Such was the case with our team, which had developed and used a self-report survey to assess adolescent alcohol use and alcohol expectancies among a sample of adolescents in Thailand. The results of the expectancy questions, when factor analyzed, suggested the measuring instrument could be improved and was likely missing important variables. It was difficult to revise the survey instrument without additional insight. We surmised that we were missing the more idiosyncratic characteristics of alcohol expectancies known only to our target group-Thai adolescents. The challenge was to find a way to view alcohol use through their eyes.Using photography -4 ElicitationElicitation is a qualitative attempt to allow representatives of a population to express themselves about a topic of interest without the investigator imposing an organizational or interpretive framework. Elicitation exemplifies the spirit of the anthropologist who seeks to understand the perspectives of the people being studied (LeCompte, 1999). Elicitation activities usually consist of participant observation, interviews, discussions, focus groups and written answers to questions (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999;...

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