Photovoice: A Participatory Action Research Strategy Applied to Women's Health

Abstract

Photovoice is a participatory action research strategy that may offer unique contributions to women's health. It is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. Photovoice has three main goals: to enable people (1) to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through large and small group discussion of their photographs, and (3) to reach policymakers. This report gives an overview of the origins, key concepts, methods, and uses of photovoice as a strategy to enhance women's health.

‘Welcome to My Life!’ Photovoice: Needs Assessment of, and by, Persons with Physical Disabilities in the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

“…Ten individuals with physical disability were selected, to allow for in-depth discussion and critical analysis of the situation by the study population (14,17). The group consisted of five women and five men, to take into account gender differences between men and women with disabilities (5).…”

“…Three kinds of informed consent were central to the study: participation, being photographed in an identifiable way, and publication of the photographs (14,17). As the photographs included personal information, the results of this research project would therefore be used for study purposes only after informed consent was obtained.…”

Shining light inside the tunnel: using photovoice as a strategy to define the needs for health promotion among families of low socioeconomic status

“…Although the photovoice methodology may have some attractive features compared to traditional research methods, selection bias might still have occurred, as the families in the worst conditions may not have been willing to participate. While the number of participants was appropriate for a photovoice study (Wang, 1999), the relatively low number of participating families might reduce the generalizability of the results (Catalani & Minkler, 2010). …”

“…The analyses of the individual interviews resulted in four common themes that were discussed and confirmed by the participants during the focus group. For the exhibition, the participants selected the most important photographs relating to each theme, which helped with the integration of data and the prioritization of their messages (Wang, 1999). The transcripts of the individual interviews and the focus group session were used by the researcher to clearly describe the photographs and comments for each of the themes.…”

Giving Life to Data: University—Community Partnerships in Addressing HIV and AIDS through Building Digital Archives

“…Creative and participatory visual approaches such as photo-voice and collaborative video have been found to be key ways of engaging young people (Walsh et al, 2002;. Our various projects, such as the Learning Together project (de Lange et al, 2003), the Every Voice Counts project (de Lange et al, 2006) and the Youth as Knowledge Producers project (Stuart et al, 2006), have drawn on photo-voice and participatory video techniques (Wang, 1999;Mitchell et al, 2005) in order to give voice to communities of teachers, learners, health-care workers and parents in identifying the key issues and challenges affecting their lives. As a result of our studies, emanating from a partnership between the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and McGill University in Canada, and a partnership with a community in Vulindlela (a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal), the collections of community-produced photographs have accumulated up to 3000 items over the last five years.…”